LONDON SAVES ME!

29. ITALIAN GROUNDHOG DAY

2010-11-16T03:27:00.000-08:00

For lack of a better word I’ll call them ‘back strokes’: memories so intense and vivid you are actually re-living them. Old photographs ‘jog’ your memory. Watching home videos revives forgotten details. But a ‘back stroke’ propels you back to relive an episode from your own private past. When I had that first one waiting for my Quattro Stagioni in the Gourmet Pizza on Gabriel's Wharf I thought it was due to a longing to resume my pre-stroke active TV career. It wasn’t. A few months later after I’d had lots of 'back strokes' I realized these episodes had something to do with my brain re-wiring itself, hitting very odd memory buttons and re-running trivial incidents from my life. It was like a mental ‘Groundhog Day’ served up with sounds, smells and sometimes food.

In that first Italian 'back stroke' I was propelled back several years to another pizzeria in a tiny village South of Rome. We were in Italy filming a TV programme on the phenomenon of stigmatas – the signs of Christ’s suffering. I’ve already mentioned Signor G who told us he received some of his stigmatas in a spaceship over Uruguay. This time we were filming Signor ‘Giuseppe’ a 70 something widower who lived south of Rome. He claimed he got his stigmatas from decades on his knees praying to the Madonna. Down the years the Vatican had sent important people to investigate him claims. Expert doctors had x-rayed his stigmatas. They verified that no self cutting was involved. The molecules in his skin seemed to open and bleed of their own accord.

      That morning I had interviewed him in his living room which had more holy statues than all the shops in Knock. Outside bus loads of voluble Italians tried to storm in to be blessed by ‘Giuseppe’ and get on British TV. Some of his fans had problems with drugs, others were possessed by devils or suffered from depression. The young, attractive women were possessed by devils. The older women had the depression. That interview with Signor ‘Giuseppe’ was full of mystical, mysterious material. The only drawback was that he was extremely long winded - something which doesn’t lend itself to exciting, snappy TV sound bites. He became even more loquacious about his bilocating days when he visited a particular Madonna in a lovely church in Washington DC every night for 3 months without ever leaving his bed in Italy.
     The Director stopped him mid flow and asked him to please repeat the story but more succinctly: along the lines of: ‘For three months every night I zoomed over to a special Church in Washington DC without ever leaving my own bed here in Italy.’ And could he also explain for the benefit of our viewers what bilocating was? Signor ‘Giuseppe’ was annoyed at having to  talk us through something as basic as bilocating – being in two distant parts of the globe at the same time. The director emphasized we were aiming for complete accuracy. It was best to hear the facts from the interviewees themselves.
     The day before on the other side of Italy near Bari, Signor G had told us he chatted to aliens in UFOs. What language did they speak on all the planets he visited? His answer: ‘they speak and understand all languages.’ I asked him next time he went to a distant galaxy could he get me a chip – that way I wouldn’t have to spend years perfecting my foreign languages. He returned my smile. He was very pleasant about all our queries.

As opposed to Signor ‘Giuseppe’ who almost snarled when he was asked yet again to ‘briefly’ explain bilocating to Washington, DC. Sitting in that Italian living room the thought did occur to me that, ‘Gee, wouldn’t it be great to bilocate without having to pay the air fare. Walk the Burren at twilight one day, salsa and mojitos in Rio another night.’ I do not mock people’s beliefs but it was a hard one to digest before lunch.

Lunch! At mid-day it wasn’t bilocating, miracles, stigmatas or casting out devils that was uppermost on our minds. Our sole focus was: LUNCH. People who don’t work in tv never realise how vital lunch is. Not too long ago the crew needed lunch to top up enough energy to haul around the heavy camera, lights and sound equipment. This has now gone the way of the dinosaurs since cameras are no longer the size of sheds. English crews always insisted on lunch because: union rules and they had to avoid cholesterol withdrawal. In Italy lunch is a joyous and essential interruption from the slog of working.

Our Italian crew found us a pizza/pasta place close by. We ordered enough starch and carbohydrates to cope with the strenuous afternoon of filming the casting out of devils, curing depression, miracles, etc. To make doubly, triply sure there would be no misunderstandings the director called Signor ‘Giuseppe’s’ home to confirm - for the nth time - that we would be back filming at 2.30 on the dot. Only to discover to our horror that Signor ‘Giuseppe’ had legged it to Rome on one of the pilgrim buses. How could he have done that to us? He knew we’d come all the way from London to film him casting out devils and performing miracles THAT afternoon. We had booked the expensive crew for THAT day. He had agreed to the time, the date, the location in a multitude of faxes.

And what was behind his sudden bus trip to Rome? His doctor in Rome had called to tell him he had a cancellation that afternoon, and could check out his arthritic knees. In the course of our long interview Signor ‘Giuseppe’ and his assistants had given us testimonials of the illnesses and ailments he had miraculously cured down the years including a well documented brain tumour. But not a whisper about his own arthritic knees – due to years of kneeling was the cameraman’s diagnosis

It was a disaster. We had no film crew for the following day. Everything had been strictly scheduled for that afternoon: film Signor ‘Giuseppe’ casting out devils, curing the sick and depressed, interview a busload of pilgrims. Before lunch he had confirmed the schedule he’d agreed to in writing weeks earlier. We turn our backs and instead of casting out devils he’s on a bus to Rome to have his arthritic knees checked out.

The Director spent his entire lunch hour picking at his pizza and talking on his mobile to the TV company in London trying to solve the unscheduled arthritic knees jaunt to Rome. The film crew and I ate our lunch and wondered what to film instead of miracles in the afternoon. Finally the astute cameraman voiced what was uppermost on all our minds: “He casts out devils in his spare time and bilocates to Washington every night for 3 months. Why can’t he cure his own arthritic knees?” But we never got an answer. It puzzled all of us.

‘Signora. Signora.’

A very worried looking young waiter was standing by my table pointing to the pizza in front of me.

It took me several seconds to realize I was in a completely different pizzeria in London. The woman in my direct line of vision was still on her mobile phone and picking at her pizza just as the Director had done that afternoon years previously. Her behaviour must have triggered that odd Italian memory, I thought. But I was wrong. It was my first 'back stroke'. That afternoon in a pizzeria my damaged brain started re-wiring itself in its own wierd way.
It was still a cloud free, blue day and the view across the Thames of St Paul’s was enchanting. It reminded me of all the wonderful Wren Churches I still hadn’t seen in London. Like making my will, doing all 24 of them was something I’d always planned to do when I had some free time. Now with all the time in the world at my disposable I could fulfil that dream if only I could find the energy.

That’s how the Wren Churches became my next recovery project.

28. KEEP ON TRUCKIN'

2010-11-15T08:44:00.000-08:00

For a brief ‘fun’ period in 70’s Manhattan ‘keep on truckin’’, was a favourite buzzword. It only applied to women. The sub-text being: ‘You’ve come a long way, baby. Now, keep on truckin’. Post stroke I had 2 choices: keep on truckin’ or give up and organise my own wake. I opted for truckin’. It had more umph and pizzaz. Unfortunately my truckin’ lacked both these upbeat elements.

The Housing Department of the Social Services was my only truckin’ destination. After my landlady gave me a month’s notice, I was a frequent visitor - think frequent flyer - to the Housing Services. Mercifully they were located just one street away. It was dreadfully draining but I could not risk losing the only thing I needed in life – a bed to recover in.

My left hand now danced to its own tune, as useless as a dangling fin. On one of my blood runs to Charing Cross Hospital the neurologist and the Stroke Co-ordinator wrote an official letter stating that since I and my left hand were deteriorating instead of improving could a Social Worker help me deal with my housing problem? I took the letter to the housing authority and waited two hours in a blur of fatigue to hand it over to the relevant person. The hospital letter was added to my file. I was then ‘warned’ I had a better chance of whistling Dixie out my armpit than getting a social worker. I’m paraphrasing here.

March dwindled by in a sick dreary fog. Until the sunny Friday I was back in the Housing Services for another distressing visit. I was now trapped in a Kafkaesque housing quandary. If I moved and tried to rent another flat of my own accord I would legally be making myself ‘voluntarily homeless’ and would never again qualify for housing benefits or Council help. And how had that happened? Because the landlady got the date wrong when she served me notice and the council told her she would have to give me another 2 months notice correctly dated. Her response to this was to hire lawyers who accused the council of ‘helping me to flout the law’ when I was stubbornly refusing to move out. The Council replied to her lawyers stating that if they didn’t apologize to them by return of post they would report them to the Guild of Solicitors. Great! Another bucket of shite and stress! Just so not what the doctors ordered.

That blue skied Friday in March I sat dazed with fatigue in the Hammersmith and Fulham Housing Services with all the other desperate cases. Depression, fatigue, and dread oozed from every pore. Notice no reference to anger! Anger requires energy. And energy like happiness and singing was now only a memory. But my main anxiety was: I could not fathom out the intricacies of ‘making myself voluntarily homeless’. Four simple words. Yet no matter how hard I tried or how often the housing officers explained it to me I simply could not grasp the logic behind this ‘making myself voluntarily homeless’ scenario. My brain had retained most of the stuff I’d drummed into it pre-stroke. I could still read Goethe in German or Balzac in French. No problem. But now my brain refused to absorb even the simplest new concepts. It was terrifying.

After that particular housing ‘chat’ it was very tempting to go home and lie down for the rest of the year or until such time as the Council and the law deemed me ‘legally homeless’ whereupon I could move without losing my benefits. But I’d already spent 2 and a half months in bed trying not to look at the walls. In a savage bid to lift my spirits I trucked across town to Festival Hall where they had free lunchtime jazz concerts on a Friday. There was a blue sky and it wasn’t raining. If I got there in one piece, I could sit in the lobby, enjoy an hour of free jazz and return home revitalised.

Oh, the glorious sounds of free jazz in the Festival Hall foyer! The euphoria of listening to that jazz Quartet and being swept away to a happy stress free zone. Mentally I gave myself five gold stars for being so positive and inventive. That’s when I noticed that the trombone player had some kind of a strap attached to the top of his arm - to compensate for the fact that he didn’t have a left arm below the elbow. My triumph at taking the district Line for 30 minutes evaporated. During the intermission I was doubly stunned to see him take off some kind of harness. Both his arms ended just above the elbow. He had what the rest of us others would consider an absolute infirmity. Yet he could produce more elevating music than most of the fully limbed. At that moment my duff left hand seemed minimal. But my non functioning hand was my first brush with infirmity and the unfortunate thing is that we rarely think about other people’s infirmities. That fabulous trombone player truly inspired me that day. I thought if he can play professional jazz with no arms then I can definitely get my full life back again.

Truly uplifted for the first time in months I wandered the short distance to Gabriel’s Wharf to enjoy the view of St Paul’s on the other side of the Thames. But my resources faded in front of the Gourmet Pizza. My choices then were: go in, sit down and recover or pay a semi fortune to take a cab home. I didn’t want to go back to that dump of a flat ever again so I went into the pizza place on Gabriel’s Wharf with its pleasant view of St. Paul’s. Sitting in the Gourmet Pizza I was thrilled to be able to cope with sitting in a restaurant even if the murmur from the few afternoon diners was debilitating. I ordered a Quattro Stagioni even though I didn’t really want one. Appetite was another thing killed off by the stroke.

I was the only person dining alone – something I’d done and enjoyed for decades when I was working abroad and needed a break to be on my own, relax and focus on something other than work for half an hour. This was a completely different kettle of fish. I needed to go to the loo but hadn’t the energy to get up and walk there unassisted. The restaurant buzz (which to the normal me would have been a melodious murmur) was inducing near blackout. In order not to faint snout down into the bread basket I focused on the menu – reading every word like a five year old toiling over her homework. It helped. But re-reading the menu for the fifth time wasn’t like zipping through a hilarious Carl Hiaason caper. There was some bewildering minutia involving camembert. A donation of 25p went to the homeless if you ordered the pizza with camembert in it. Plus they’d match that donation of 25p. Did they have a glut of camembert? Was this their way of shifting it? Why did they emphasise their good work for the homeless on the menu? How close might I come to being on the receiving end of the benevolence of people willing to eat Camembert on their pizzas?

Having analysed the menu to death I then tried to tune out the exuberant lovers at the table next to mine. They had already downed 1 bottle of red and were half way through their second. There was also a lot of dribbling and drooling and not necessarily over the food. I discreetly focused my gaze on the group of mid 20’s women who were splashing out on a ‘mobile phone lunch’. The young woman who sat directly in my line of vision had arrived last, troughs and furrows of worry all over her face. Like the others she too flung her mobile on the table as if signalling: ‘Yes, I have that seat to Mars. They’re calling to confirm. If I miss that call it could be another 10 years before my number comes up again.’ She spent the entire lunch fielding phone calls, arranging meetings with more friends for late shopping. If she had been co-ordinating the medical dispatch of a dozen fresh lungs and hearts to Tokyo she could not have looked more intense.

To this day I still do not know if it was this woman’s intense inter-action with her phone as opposed to her friends, the scent of Italian cuisine wafting around the restaurant, the Italian lovers, or a combination of all things Italian that triggered my first ‘back stroke’.

27. RADIO DAYS AND NIGHTS

2010-10-25T15:02:00.000-07:00

Friendship is based on reciprocity. What happens to friendship when one of you has changed into a boring, bed-ridden, no-working, no-talking person? What happens when your friends’ world is still busy, frantic, exciting and yours is reduced to eternal fatigue, bed, rest, outings to the blood clinic and trips to the Housing office? It’s a tricky one. Before my ‘event’ I could have told my friends anything no matter how nutty or odd. But now my new best friend was the radio. My NBF chatted away to me never needing reciprocity. I didn’t have to tire myself out and talk back to it. But if I desperately wanted to chat I could have called up the talk radio shows and run up my telephone bill. I listened to the radio all day in between five hour naps. At night my new best friend was Richard from Radio 5, ‘Up All Night’.

During my alert periods I learnt some fascinating insights. One night a programme was ‘coming up’ on a ‘better class of cockroach’. Unfortunately I drifted off before I found out what the ‘better class of cockroach’ was. Another morning Paul Theroux described the tribe who put an edible dormouse into their mouths before going on a long trek. During the trek the dormouse fed off the inside of the man’s mouth. Later when the dormouse was fast asleep, he was taken out of the man’s mouth and grilled up and eaten - dormouse barbecue! How could I possibly tell ANYONE that my life was now so dull I was riveted by tit-bits about cockroaches and dormice?

Another day in March I woke up to a report from the BBC Rome Correspondent. He said that Pompeii in its heyday had the same number of brothels as bakeries. I fell asleep again, missed the connection and woke up wondering whether the bakeries in Italy had gone on strike. This was a weekly occurrence when I lived in Sicily. Had there been another change in the Italian government - probably the 595th since the end of World War II? Maybe Vesuvius had erupted? In my previous life I would have devoted a nanosecond to the news of the equality of bakeries and brothels in Pompeii. Now I was changing into a real weirdo, poised to call up the BBC to find out WHY they’re putting out a programme featuring Pompeii, brothels and bakeries.

But it was a radio programme that changed my life or rather my after death plans. How about that for radio drama? One morning, around 6 o’clock, I tuned into an interesting programme on Radio 5 about Ian Dury whose song ‘Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll’ was very famous. They played a little bit of his music - a most unusual event on the ‘BBC all news and sports radio’. Then they changed tack. Next up was a short report on Anthony Powell, author of ‘A Dance To the Music of Time’. They played excerpts from the dull radio version of this book. I almost drifted off. But the music of Al Gray - a jazz trombone player kept me alert. He reminisced about the best moment in his life - playing with Sinatra. And finally an item on Dr Comfort, the author of ‘The Joy of Sex’, the international best-seller, which we as students back in the ‘60s used to peruse for free in bookstores and choke with laughter at the funny sketches. How odd to think that ‘The Joy of Sex’ had been such a hilarious best-seller a few short decades ago, when the world was so naive. Now to stimulate any interest they’d have to entitle it ‘The Joy of Multiple Orgasm Sex while Gardening/Converting the shed into a bijou studio/ and Losing Weight ’

It was only at the end I realised that I had been enjoying the OBITUARIES programme! Ye Gods! It’s 6 o’clock on a Sunday morning and the once vibrant moi is riveted by the obits. A very brief period ago I would have been out jogging in Central Park at that time of the morning. Another time, another life! I kept saying to myself that this stroke recovery period of having the radio as a best friend would soon become another time another life. One day I’d probably look back at it and smile …. Oh yeah! How about ‘look back and snarl’?

The obituary programme made me think of my own death. Not in a macabre way. I still don’t know where I’d like to ‘settle’ - except for a penthouse in Paris complete with a Medieval walled rooftop garden complete with a hammock that comes with my ideal man who’s a cordon bleu cook/comedian. If I don’t know where I’d like to put roots down, how am I supposed to know where I’d like to be buried?

I’d discussed this briefly a few years previously while walking with my niece Bairbre in the Tipperary countryside. We had visited my parents’ grave. This got us onto the topic of funerals, burials, cremations, etc. She asked me if I’d bought my burial plot. I laughed and said I didn’t know where I wanted to settle down in life let alone where the plot for all eternity was going to be. We chatted about various modern means of burial: in outer space, being burnt in a boat on the Shannon à la Viking. I told her I wouldn’t mind being cremated but years of TV work on the Holocaust had filled me with an utter terror of cremation. Also one of the saddest lines in literature must be Graham Greene’s description of the smoke coming up from the crematorium of what had once been his lover’s body. And wasn't cremation a waste of vital organs?

Walking along the Tipperary road debating the topic I said to Bairbre, “If I were cremated where would we put my ashes?” On the mantelpiece? Whose mantelpiece? Scattered at sea? Suddenly I thought ‘silver lockets’! Wouldn’t it be nice to buy lots of lockets for dear friends and family to wear on a chain around their necks. Put my ashes into the locket! Bairbre said:

“Then you want to show somebody your auntie and you open the locket and, whoops, there she goes!”.

She mimed opening a locket and watching ashes scatter all over the country road. We laughed and I said:

“Yes, but wouldn’t that be nice, I’d never really know where I’d end up”.

Having listened to the obits programme and being reminded of the lockets with my ashes I suddenly decided I’d donate my body to ‘science and Charing Cross’. Why not? That way I wouldn’t have to specify whether I’d be buried or burnt. I wouldn’t know where I’d end up. I’d still be on a post death mystery tour. Maybe bits of me could help research. Maybe in Charing Cross lab, maybe in some dissection ward with laughing first year med students, maybe bits of me would be preserved in a jar. But it would be adventurous, interesting and much more exciting than living with maggots.

Months later in the blood clinic a nurse told me the students would LOVE my corpse because I had fantastic muscle tone. Plus the students always had a memorial service in Southwark Cathedral – Shakespeare’s Church!!! It sounded very attractive I told her, especially since I adore the Bard .. but not for a few more decades, thank you.

These were my radio days and nights. Things I could never discuss with anyone. As a topic of conversation fear of dying, death and burials are up there with recipes for curried tripe with eyeballs.

26. ROSEY CAVALIER - SO OLD! SO OLD!

2010-10-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

Drifting in and out of consciousness during Woman’s Hour I heard the most exquisite duet from Rosenkavalier - that rarest of operas. None of the women die horribly, commit suicide or are killed off in the last act. That duet filled me with longing to go to the opera again. The only problem was: how could I get out of bed and how could I afford the prices in the new revitalised Opera House that had undergone a 40 million pound face lift? Then I remembered that life giving word ‘concessions’. Maybe I’d qualify for a cheap Opera ticket. When it comes to cheap opera tickets I’m an expert having spent most of my opera life in standing room.

My love for opera goes back to my student days in Vienna. Growing up in the Irish countryside in the ‘50s I had a better chance of being the first woman on Neptune than I had of attending a REAL opera. Back then the only reluctant contact we had with opera was the weekly BBC radio programme introduced by Godfrey Winn with a record of the ‘Voices of Spring’. His timing clashed with our supper - scrambled eggs, sausages, devilled kidneys or whatever cholesterol saturated delight passed for supper in those days. It was my father’s favourite programme and during the Godfrey Winn holy hour we were not allowed to talk or fight. We were ordered to ‘bask’ in the music.

My first contact with real opera came when I was working au pair in Lyon, France. It was by mistake. I thought ‘Carmen’ was the French translation for the ‘Carmen Jones’ musical which had a few catchy tunes. That Carmen in the Lyon Opera House, France, should have been the first sophisticated - another element direly lacking in the 50’s Irish countryside - evening of my life. It certainly was memorable! I was molested by a young man who plastered himself up against my back. At first I thought he was an eager opera standee trying to get a better view of the stage and kindly shifted to the left, then to the right. But no! He was most insistent on slapping himself smack bang up against my back! Most perplexing!

Of all the emigrants who left the Emerald Isle in the vintage year of 1962 I was the greenest. I had never heard the word molestation, or sexual harassment, or, God forbid, perversion in the standing room of a French Opera House. Even the word ‘sex’ was rarely heard or used. ‘Intercourse’ was the word thundered from the pulpit on a Sunday and synonymous with visions of fire, brimstone, and burning in hell for eternity. Out of Ireland for the first time in my life at the age of 17, my night at Carmen was my first brush with real culture. My first night out anywhere. And this guy was ruining it for me by pressing himself up against me and distracting me from the singing. I put an end to it by jack knifing my right leg with GUSTO giving him a good backwards kick. He narrowly escaped being speared in the balls with my 60’s stiletto heel. After that I was able to ‘bask’ in Carmen.

But it was only when I enrolled at the University in Vienna and met up with students who loved opera that I dared indulge in standing room again. Standing room at the Staatsoper in Vienna was dirt cheap - all students’ favourite word. It cost less than the movies. They changed the repertoire daily so we went every week. Just because you’re fresh and young doesn’t mean you wouldn’t prefer the luxury and comfort of sitting down. We were all experts at ferreting out the free seats. But the ushers wouldn’t let us go near them. They wore military type uniforms in those days and studied the faces of the frequent standees – the better to recognize them. That way they could bodily yank us out of the empty seat and hound us back to standing room!

That morning in bed overwhelmed with illness and fatigue, listening to that duet from Rosenkavlier on Woman’s Hour I ached to be young again, capable of jumping out of bed and standing for a 3 hour performance. Unfortunately I couldn’t stand for 5 minutes, let alone an entire opera. But that duet inspired me to rise from my bed and call Covent Garden to investigate the ‘on the day concessions’. If Traviata, Boheme or Carmen had been on there wouldn’t have been a single ticket left over for the likes of me. But I lucked out. A few cheap tickets were available. Thanks to Woman’s Hour, my stroke and my concessions, after 30 years in standing room I finally made it to the Opera stalls for £15.00.

It had been a while since I’d seen Rosenkavalier. I’d forgotten the exact details of the story. Sometimes it’s best to bask in the music and ignore the libretto completely. In most cases it can be summed up in 2 words - SHE DIES. This happens in Carmen, Boheme, Traviata, Manon Lescaut, Aida, Othello, Lucia Di Lammermoor, Tosca, Rigoletto, etc. Thanks to the huge surtitles over the stage of the Royal Opera House I can read what’s going on. I wish I hadn’t.

A line from the aria was: “You’ve made me look like an old woman today”. It’s an aria about the passing of time. The older woman holds a mirror in her hand and sings with quiet despair how her dresser has ‘made her look old’ and how ‘old age had crept into her face’. The word ‘CREEP’ is up there in GIGANTIC letters on the surtitles. Old age creeps into the face of the older woman who is in love with the younger man. Old age divides the two people in love - the older one and the younger one. It’s a long, long aria. She sings it looking in a mirror and the surtitles repeat the creeping …. creeping … of OLD AGE into a woman’s face.

Looking in the mirror and admitting you are suddenly ancient is truly painful. As I write these words I can hear my nephew Alan in his Tipperary accent admonishing: “Ah, lighten up, willya Brigitte”. But how can we as women? Go into any newsagents or book store and look for a female face over the age of 12 - okay, let’s say 22. Seek and ye shall not find! Or look for a black female face of any age on the cover of a popular magazine! Women of all hues seem to die out at the age of 15. If they get any older their entire life is spent on ways and means of stopping age creeping into their faces.

Rosenkavalier’s libretto is by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, written 100 years ago. Since then has anything changed with regard to female aging? The perception of women’s beauty has only shifted somewhat. Now we are expected to go wrinkle free into our 80's. Growing old before your time like myself was a killer. Instead of ‘basking’ in the music in the splendour of my plush stall seat I was raging inside about being struck old before my time, the unfairness of men growing old gracefully and women withering on the vine.

During the intermission I was mildly distracted from my rage by the fact that champagne cost an outrageous £10 a glass! Tourists were taking photographs of their night at the opera, tossing back the champers. A lot of stuffy people glared at the snappers mentally signally “Oh, how gauche”. But who’s going to have tangible memories of their night at Rosenkavalier? I also admired the audacity of the couple who brought their intermission sandwiches in Tupperware. They sat on the red velvet banquette, sipped their own wine, took everything in and had a great time. They were probably standees who could hardly afford the ticket let alone the high crush bar prices. Again it reminded of my youth, vigour and standing room in Vienna.

I wished I was healthy, back in standing room and not in row P, sitting next to the lone, silent, middle aged man. I was a bit miffed he hadn’t returned my high wattage, low threat smile. He was my age but no doubt he would have smiled, drooled and dribbled if I’d been a crunchy 20 something pumped up Pammie. Because of the ‘creeping’ aria I wondered why in God’s earth middle aged women the world over didn’t stage a revolution to put an end to this lie of never ageing, never growing older, never having any wrinkles.

Despite the rapturous music my mind dwelled on ageing and male/female issues, romance and the desert of no romance that would probably be my lot in life now that old age had crept prematurely into my whole body. In the movies of course it turns out differently. In ‘Pretty Woman’, Richard Gere the lonely billionaire takes Julia Roberts, the hooker to a performance of La Traviata. The lady of the camellias was also a hooker. But in the 19th century what smorgasbord of choices did a woman have? Wife, nanny, teacher, housekeeper, hooker? Julia Roberts cries at Traviata. It’s the clincher. The hooker and the billionaire are soul mates. Up the violins and kleenex sales. And they say opera librettos are unrealistic!

I took another glance at the guy next to me. He was my age, still had hair, well dressed, but I’m quite picky! I just couldn’t envisage having a coup de foudre with a man whose behaviour was on a standard much lower than that of our beloved dog, Butch. Several times this unsmiling man noisily licked his index finger and then slobbered his wet finger up and down the side of his nose at the ROYAL Opera House. Butch, our lovely dog who looked like a cross between a lion and a teddy bear was named in honour of the Irish singing star Butch Moore. Our Butch spent his entire life outside in the mucky fields of Abbeyfeale. He was an outdoor dog so his pong preceded him. But only on warm days! He was a dog devoid of sophistication who scoffed his dinner in one LOUD slurping moment of delight. The sight of a biscuit unleashed a flood of drool in old Butch. And if Butch had been a human, which of course he was in our family’s eyes, he would have joyfully returned the smile of an older woman alone at the opera. Butch would NOT have approved of the appallingly unfriendly, spit daubing man next to me.

Call me different but the thought of Butch sitting next to me in the red plush velvet Opera stall seat made me smile and feel young again and plunged me back into the arms of the music. So what if old age had crept into my face? I’d always have opera and music and fun and feelings and laughter and very soon I’d be myself again and back in standing room.

25. THE PLAY AIENT THE THING

2010-09-27T06:57:00.000-07:00

The balcony buzzed like a bothered beehive. Everyone stood around whispering sotto voce.

‘What happened?’ I asked the woman next to me.

‘It’s ‘Katie’. They can’t tell if she’s still alive.’

She moved aside to let me see what everyone was feverishly whispering about. The carers on either side of ‘Katie’ were trying to determine if she had drifted away or simply drifted off during the intermission while everyone else was wolfing down the ice cream.

‘Katie luv, are you awake? Are you still with us, sweetheart?’

They stood on either side of motionless ‘Katie’ holding a glass of water to her lips and continued their pleading refrain of ‘Katie luv, Katie sweetheart’. Everyone waited, no doubt thinking the same thing. What was the proper procedure when somebody died during a performance? Then suddenly ‘Katie’ opened her eyes, bent forward and started sipping the water. There was still life in ‘Katie’. The two carers became most emotional as they encouraged her to sip the water while gently stroking her hair and shoulders. It was a very touching tableau. Two carers who looked as if they tossed tractors over their shoulders for fun in their spare time tenderly handling ‘Katie’ like a wounded butterfly. Very carefully they lifted her out of her seat and carried her in their arms to the waiting ambulance which I’d spotted pulling up outside the theatre during the intermission.

We resumed our seats. The women behind me kept repeating how ‘Katie’ had laughed so hard all the way through the first act. Maybe it was just too much for her, they said. Laughing in the theatre, not a bad way to go was the last thing I heard them say before we were back in ‘Peggy for You’ land. The Bard said ‘the play’s the thing’. For those who need to brush up their Shakespeare it’s from Hamlet. ‘The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.’ But for me the play was most certainly not the thing during that second act. I was back to thinking of dying, old age, and not being able to cope. Eventually the laughter all around me slowly throttled that negative flow. The decision I made in the balcony of that Victorian theatre because of ‘Katie’s’ near extinction was to haul my ass out of bed as often as I could and get as much out of life despite the extreme limitations of this paralyzing PSF. ‘Life is a banquet and millions of poor suckers are starving to death’ to quote as Auntie Mame. All one had to do was find the right menu.

My life’s new focus became theatre reviews and matinees. Some of the matinees I saw included ‘Cooking with Elvis’, and ‘Helpless’ at the Donmar. For those to whom Donmar is not as familiar as Donald Duck, this is the small London Theatre famed for its director, Sam Mendes, Oscar winning Director of ‘American Beauty’. The Donmar brought Nicole Kidman here to star in David Hare’s ‘Blue Room’ – a modern adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s ‘Der Reigen’ (the turn of the century Austrian play about the carousel of sex, sex, sex). In the Donmar production Nicole Kidman was nude for a few seconds (a lot of people do that when sex is on the menu. It’s not de rigeur but it’s a bit like wearing a bib when you’re eating lobster). Some people mortgaged their apartments to see the ‘Blue Room’. It was refreshing to see such a sudden pulsating interest in culture.

I also saw ‘W;t’. Before I went I didn’t know that this play was about the last day in the life of a University professor of English suffering from terminal cancer. Her speciality was John Donne the poet who used a lot of semi colons – something I also didn’t know. I just assumed that the quirkily titled ‘W;t’ would deliver a good belt of much needed comedy. It didn’t. In a former pre-stroke life I’d probably have lapped it up because it was moving, intelligent and beautifully written and acted. Most of the audience sobbed and cried all the way through which wasn’t part of my PSF THEATRE PLAN to reintroduce some zing and zest into my life.

Unfortunately, most of the other preview matinees I saw were diabolical tripe. My admiration for theatre reviewers grew astronomically. They could write columns about a production in elegant terms, give a synopsis, find some redeeming aspects about the set, direction and acting while subtly implying that most people would be better off playing Russian roulette in their sheds. Reviewers had to tread a very line. One inch over that line and actors would be tossing themselves into the Thames like lemmings or else murdering the reviewer. If I had been a reviewer my assessment of ‘Cooking With Elvis’ would have been: ‘grill up some road kill and save your money’. My review of ‘Helpless’, which I saw at the Donmar, would have been ‘Hopeless. But you’ll probably get it if you’re a whinging hippie, male, 50 and want to marry your best friend’s daughter’.

The PSF THEATRE PLAN was turning out to be a complete waste of my limited resources. Battling fatigue by attending crappy half-priced preview matinees was not the answer. Not even the memory of my American friend Mat could now make me laugh. Mat, the avid culture vulture comes to London on a regular basis and catches a lot of matinees during his stay. He used to say to me, in his inimitable way, that he adored going to matinees because: “Honey child, I just feel like a goddamn teenager when I go to one of those matinees.” We used to laugh about feeling young, so young at London matinees.

The PLAN came to a grinding halt with the stunning production of Tennessee Williams’ ‘Baby Doll’ at the National. When it ended, I couldn’t make it down the stairs. I had to be helped by two women on either side of me, a helpful old guy in front making sure I wouldn’t tumble down the steps and an equally ancient chap at my back encouraging me forward. Halfway down we all had to pause while I got my breath back. There and then I decided it wasn’t doing me any good to be surrounded by people who were 40 years older than me but healthier and livelier. They were not fighting this damned PSF.

I’d have to find something else on the menu of life’s exciting banquet. And Fast!

24. FEKKIN POST STROKE FATIGUE

2010-09-24T09:25:00.000-07:00

How do you spell post stroke fatigue - PSF?

Forget about leaping into the sink first thing in the morning for a bout of energetic sex à la ‘Fatal Attraction’. The mere energy involved in getting into the sink would guarantee blackout. The doctors did say: “Expect some fatigue”. The stroke booklets emphasised ‘you will be fatigued’. But ‘expecting’, and ‘experiencing’ are galaxies apart. A pregnant woman expects some pain during birth. I’ve never given birth so I can only imagine the searing agony of having a baby the size of a nicely trussed turkey painfully shoving its way through your most sensitive zones. The same goes for post stroke fatigue. If you haven’t had it you cannot even begin to imagine how awful it is.

PSF means having to rest up on your way to the loo which is just a few feet away. PSF means you’d need a rocket under the bed to get you up in the morning. If the bed were on fire that wouldn’t get you up. It would only be an added bonus of cosiness. PSF is not synonymous with exhaustion or tiredness. It’s like comparing poodles with piranhas simply because they both start with the letter ‘p’. Tired is what you feel after you’ve run the London marathon and rounded off this triumph with a few bouts of sex while sliiding down the bannisters. PSF is what you feel when you don’t have the energy to switch the kettle on for a cup of tea.

It was one morning when I was struggling to make my breakfast that I remembered the French coffee making monkey. At the time I was working on ‘Europe Express’ – a quirky yet intelligent TV series on pan European Topics. A director had floated an idea to the editor about a French monkey in the south of France who could make coffee for his invalid house bound owner along with a whole array of other admirable feats. The editor rejected the idea as too flimsy. The director probably fancied a few days In La Belle France. And why not? Travel expands the mind and this director would have made an illuminating item on coping with disability à la française.

‘What more did she want?’ the disappointed director grumbled to me. ‘The monkey’s passport number?’

Well, that monkey’s telephone number sure would come in handy I thought that morning smiling at this odd memory. On ‘Europe Express’ hundreds of ideas never made the grade while others did. Coming up with new ideas was an integral part of everyone’s job. So what was stopping me from coming up with a few dozen ideas on beating this fekkin PSF? In TV the motto was ‘if there’s a problem just solve it’. The problems in my case were zero energy, maximum boredom, a dash of despair and no entertainment. Daytime TV wasn’t an option. In millennium London there is nothing even vaguely ‘intelligent’ on 4 terrestrial channels during the day. Obviously the broadcasters think people who watch daytime telly (pensioners, bed bound, et al) are all morons who’ve had their normal brains sucked out. The afternoons are wall to wall children’s TV. The under 8’s are very well catered to. I could forget about TV as light relief to get me through the day. Just what was the secret magic formula to inspire and energise you enough to put on ALL your clothes as opposed to just your bathrobe?

Later that day watching some daytime drivel trying to come up with ideas to beat the PSF I had THE THEATRE BRAINWAVE. I would ‘do’ the West End – my way. I could just about get to the Hammersmith tube station (previously a 6 minute trot now a good 20 minute crawl). One tube ride. After that I could sit down at the theatre for the matinee once, maybe twice a week. There was a triple benefit to this project. I would be obeying doctors’ orders and reminding my legs they were made for walking. A play would stimulate my mind and remind my brain that it wasn’t dead yet. The most stimulating aspect to this idea was to attend a preview matinee (cheaper ticket) and then I could mentally write my own review. After the play officially opened and was reviewed by the professionals I could compare my review with theirs.

Buying that ticket to ‘Peggy for You’ was one of the most thrilling moments of that year. After being ‘dead’ for 2 months I felt like a member of the human race again. The play was about Peggy Ramsay one of Britain's most famous play agents. It was written by Alan Plater, (one of my top favourites and the writer whose work inspired me to move to London in '89). An added bonus was the comedienne par excellence Maureen Lipman playing Peggy. The only fly in the ointment was having to feebly fumble my way down the few steps in the balcony of the Comedy Theatre wheezing and tottering like a 99-year-old on her last breath.

Seated in the balcony behind me were 6 women decades older than me and 2 very handsome, athletic, carers. The women they were looking after were going on 100. But I looked worse than all of them.

It was an intelligent and funny play and lots of appreciative laughter came from the balcony. At intermission as usual most people lurched for the ice-cream – a London theatre tradition that has always baffled me. Maybe it’s because many theatres were built in Victorian days like the one we were in – the 120 year old Comedy Theatre. By intermission it's quite stuffy and hot. Maybe some need a bit of ice-cream to toss down their blouses so they can cool off for the second act.

I opted for some fresh air instead. Then as I struggled back to my seat I had another close encounter with death.

23. WHAT'S IN A NAME?

2010-09-19T13:58:00.000-07:00

I was waiting for my appointment outside the physio gym when I spotted the very frail old man in his wheelchair waiting to be wheeled back onto his ward. He had scant white hair and the most ancient of faces. His head sagged almost as low as his lap. He looked as if he wanted to nod off but was afraid his thin neck might snap off if he dared. He had no blanket and tried to hide his urine bag under his thin nightshirt. I looked at him thinking: “God Almighty, I’m going to be sitting here with Hello magazine and this old man is going to die right in front of my eyes before anybody pays any attention to him”.

Mercifully a few minutes later an energetic porter arrived and wheeled him vigorously towards the physio gym door. They stopped right in front of me while the porter checked a list on the back of the door. The old man looked bewildered when the porter stopped. The porter was only making sure he had the right patient, the right ward. Charing Cross is an immense hospital, it’s like trying to find a lost contact lens in Heathrow airport if you don't know where you're going.

The old man avoided looking at me even though I was the only thing in his line of vision. His face was a well of pain and incomprehension, as if he couldn’t understand how in God’s earth he had ended up in this wheelchair with his urine bag dangling between his legs. He looked wildly bewildered and the buckets of tears were right there about to burst. The porter finished filling out the formalities on the paper on the physio door. He took hold of the handles of the wheelchair.

'Okay Anthony, here we go now,’ he said heartily.

At the mention of his name, ‘Anthony’, a look of total bliss and happiness crossed the old man’s face. He had the shine of a young lad who had just scored the winning goal in the last few seconds of the game. The transformation was unbelievable. I saw it with my own eyes and I couldn’t believe it. No actor could have achieved that contrast of emotions changing terror and anxiety to glee and happiness in a semi second. The mere mention of his name ‘Anthony’ had transformed this wizened semi corpse to a beaming handsome old man.

The porter probably had a list of patients’ names, maybe that’s how he knew his name, or maybe he knew Anthony well enough to remember his case. But that episode was a startling revelation for me. I only realised how vital names were, sitting outside the physio gym in Charing Cross Hospital. If the porter had made a mistake and said, “Okay now Paul, here we go” there would have been no transformation on Anthony’s face. But by calling him by his right name, it probably summoned up a life time of important memories he had as Anthony the man.

I’ve always had a problem with my name – Brigitte. It’s been butchered to Biddy, Budgie, Breed, Brite, Gitty – to name but a few. When I was growing up every second child in Ireland was called Brigid after the first nun in Ireland circa 700 AD so at 10 I changed it influenced by a different Brigitte in the Paris Match Daddy bought to keep his French up to date. The brother immediately delighted in calling me Black Brigeen after the ugliest old tinker who ever roamed Limerick in the ‘50’s. Irish BB’s face was an ear to ear carpet of gigantic black hairy warts framed by a fuzzy black shawl. In short a terrifying female mixture of Dracula, Frankenstein and Quatermass. One glimpse of Black Brigeen could loosen your teeth in terror when she passed you on our dark country road. The parents tried to stop this hurtful BB name calling. Fat chance.

My sister Mary fared much better with her dignified name invoked every evening when we were forced to kneel and say the rosary. I did my bit following the brother’s example. Her nickname became ‘Holy Mary’ because she was able hop out of bed at 6.30 in the morning. You'd have to electrocute most people to get out of bed at that ungodly hour which was the middle of the night as far as most Irish people were concerned in those days. Mary was probably the only person, apart from the priest and the nuns, to go to 7 o’clock Mass in our village. Again the parents did not approve of the Holy Mary nickname. Years later when she became a nurse, she graduated to Lady Mary - always cool, professional, able to cure and calm all troubled waters. Now she’s graduated to ‘Mary will fix it’. As Chief Bridesmaid Lord only knows what those problems will be.

For nearly 40 years Patricia the youngest sister was known as ‘the child’. At school she was known as Andrew Downey’s daughter (No mention of the mother involved) or Mary Downey’s sister. When she moved to the United States everybody automatically called her Pat. She once tried to correct a woman who insisted on calling her Pat:

'My name isn’t Pat, my name is Patricia - Patricia.’

The woman smiled and said, 'I know that, Pat. You don’t have to tell me that Pat'.

Brother John got off much lighter. He was always called John or My Johnny as Mammy called him, in case there was any mistake about who had produced him. When he went away to boarding school, he became ‘the big fellah’ because he was tall. It was an affectionate term from Daddy who shook his hand like a real grown up when he came back from boarding school.

I hadn’t thought about Black Brigeen or Holy Mary in decades. Why had all of this poured back at the sight of the shivering Anthony? His show of happiness at the sound of his name haunted and mystified me. Why is it that the mention of your name can bring you back to life? Why do we forget people’s names yet have no trouble with Paul Newman’s? Why do we get angry when people get our names wrong?

Why is it we have a brain at all? Why do we take our brain for granted until the day it decides to retaliate?

22. SO CHIC TO BE IRISH!

2010-09-13T13:35:00.000-07:00

The porters in the blood clinic would also feature in my future hospital sitcom. The majority were big, strong, beefy men. They ranged from young, strapping, healthy, handsome guys to middle aged, again strapping, handsome, healthy guys. Theirs was a heavy duty job, involving major lifting or hefting the wheelchair and its occupant all over the hospital. Then there was the old, desiccated and emaciated Irish porter ‘Shaun’, who gave as good as he got from cranky old people who lashed out at him like nasty terriers. Several times ‘Shaun’ arrived with the wrong patient or with some other patient who’d be annoying him.

‘Shaun’ was in his 60’s and a member of one of the ‘lost generations’ of Irish in London. As everyone knows it was generations of Irishmen in Britain who built the railways, roads, sewers, most of post Blitz London while having to tolerate and swallow notices on Boarding houses that said: ‘No dogs, no blacks, no irish’. Such signs were banned under the 1976 Race Relations Act – a bit too late for the likes of ‘Shaun’. The irony of Millennium London was that some of those who had experienced such cruelty were now old and very lost in an era when it was suddenly very fashionable to be Irish – but young!

I was unaware it was chic and cool to be Irish until I caught the tv sketch show ‘Goodness Gracious Me’ - a gloriously fun perspective of Asian life in Britain. One sketch was about an English guy dumping his Indian girlfriend because she’s no longer trendy. She demands an explanation. He says, “Like well, last year Indian was like trendy. But this year Indian like ain’t trendy no more. Now like, the Irish are the new Indian. Like, ya know black is new brown.” Not having total recall for every line spoken on TV I’m paraphrasing here. The original was hilariously spot on.

‘Shaun’ did not belong to the trendy, chic, young attractive Irish folk. He was a full time member of a lost Irish generation. He vented his venom on the patients he wheeled around Charing Cross. One day ‘Shaun’s’ adversary in the wheelchair was a frail but feisty, 90 something English woman. She was like an ancient Deborah Kerr. In a cut crystal posh accent she said to ‘Shaun’:

“I said I wanted the eye clinic”.

“So why d’you say eight, then?”, ‘Shaun’ kept saying.

“I distinctly said eye.”

“No you didn’t, you said eight.”

“I said eye.”

“You said eight.”

“No, I said eye, YOU said eight.”

That was the pinnacle of hilarity to be found in the blood clinic. After the cup of tea and free biscuits and the results from the lab indicating how much Warfarin to take the ONLY thing to do was get the hell out of there as fast as I could and erase the dismal memory.

However, sometimes to double the dose of hospital hilarity on a Wednesday morning I had to go for physio. I once thought ‘physio’ was such an elegant word like 'spa'. It would knock the stoop and creases out of my stroke struck body and hand me back my gym toned frame on a platter. Such were my preconceptions! Wrong! Charing Cross ‘Physio Gym’ was like a war zone. Most attendees were patients with missing legs being fitted for artificial limbs and amputees learning to walk again. I asked the nurse if they were all war casualties? She explained that a lot of amputations were also due to diabetes, cancer, accidents and other illnesses. After that, ‘physio’ lost its elegant ring and became a life saver. They taught me exercises to restore full life to my left side and bring back some mobility to my left hand. The strangest exercise was to put a tiny amount of rice on a tray and try picking up the grains singly with the fingers of my duff left hand.

I hated waiting outside ‘Physio’ with its panoramic view of patients struggling to walk a few paces again. I always forgot to bring a book with me and was reduced to skimming old hospital copies of cretinous OK, HELLO trash which concentrates on the lives of ‘stars’, people who live on a fake, tinsel planet far from the stroke zone and the reality zone of missing limbs. The choice was: read the brain dead magazines, stare at the wall or try not to look into the ‘gym’ where the one or the no legged were being taught to walk again and where the physiotherapists were attaching limbs to new patients.

Amazingly it was on one such Wednesday morning outside the physio gym that I experienced the most startlingly elevating insight into the workings of the human mind/memory.

21. THE BLOOD BOOK

2010-09-06T16:02:00.000-07:00

‘Such are the days of our Lives’ – was an Irish poem we were tormented with at school. It waxed lyrical about the routine of ancient everyday life: cleaning out the hearth, bringing in the turf, sweeping the floor. Even if the nuns had tried to explain the sub-text to us rockin’ & rollin’ teenagers – the beat of life, each day’s cadence – it would have made as much sense as Macbeth and his 'creeping in a petty pace from day to day'. The poet’s take on the rhythm of living was what Mammy called ‘her routine’. In her case this also included using the wings of our dead ducks or hens to clean out the ashes in the grate (nothing was wasted in those days). A propos daily drudgery the French naturellement go one better with ‘métro, boulot, dodo’, (commute, work, sleep). It’s not as catchy in English but it still refers to the rhythm of billions all over the globe: commuting, working all day and then going to bed.

      That March there was no rhythm or cadence to my fog of a life. Except for Wednesday morning when I had a vital appointment at the Charing Cross blood clinic to have my INR (the blood clotting factor) measured. The first time I went to the Blood Clinic I must have still been high on Heparin. I would write a sitcom about this place peopled by at least 30 characters more hilariously grumpy than the irascible Victor Meldrew character in ‘One Foot In the Grave’. The female variety of Victor was amply represented.
      The blood clinic didn’t look any different from other crowded waiting rooms. When you arrived you gave your appointment card to the receptionist. When your number was called you trotted in to see the very efficient phlebotomists who took a vial of blood without causing a quiver of pain. The labelled vial of blood was sent down to the lab. It took between 30 to 60 minutes for the result to come back. Then the nurse advised you what dose of rat poison to take to keep your blood clotting at the desirable rate.
      The Warfarin book looked like the war ration ones you see in old films. Every week the nurse emphasized how important it was to keep this book with me at all times. I was NEVER to leave home without it.   Why? In case I was involved in an accident. The Warfarin was stopping my blood from clotting too much. It was also diluting my blood. I was coming to the blood clinic every week so they could ADJUST my blood to the optimal clotting ratio. Like varieties of cream! Not too thick and not thin. At the moment my blood had the consistency of water. If I had a major cut or an accident I’d very quickly bleed to death. The things you learn!
      In the blood clinic the ages range from 20 to 100 and all nationalities are represented. A Polish granny with her attentive grandson who makes sure she doesn’t forget her scarf and lovingly adjusts it around her neck. The group of Irish ‘labourers’. One brawny man in his forties is dazed at the sight of his useless hand. He ‘couldn’t even change a light bulb with it now’. He still smokes he tells his mates. He isn’t allowed to drink.   ‘If I had to give up the fags as well, I might as well throw myself off Chiswick Bridge’. There’s the strapping 20 something athlete with the sculpted body whose jittery hand spills his coffee all over the floor. Some ‘auldies’ bicker at the top of their lungs about domestic issues like who forgot to buy the Bran Flakes. Others consider the blood clinic as a bit of an outing. There’s a well known actor. He sits alone puzzling over his crossword. Two women try to remember his name because ‘he used to be somebody famous, didn’t he?’ But whatever our external differences, all of us had one thing in common. Our brains have been damaged.
      The faces of the people attending the blood clinic look no different from those you’d see on any London tube - happy, wretched, bored or anxious. The whole spectrum of human emotion is in that room. One woman sat next to me once and raged on and on for 20 minutes about the 31 bus that never came, was always late, etc, etc. She was cutting into my reading time of ancient issues of Bride magazine! I wanted to snap at her and say:
      ‘Listen lady, you’re alive! Could you shut up about that bloody bus. Read a magazine, do something to distract yourself’.
      But deep down I knew her ranting at the buses was a release from a greater fear, - of dying, having another stroke. An assault on the brain (that’s what the experts call it!) brings out different reactions in different people. I – the woman who gets a migraine at the thought of shopping and fashion - was avidly sucking up articles on bridesmaids’ accessories in Brides magazines.    If she was ranting about the 31 bus that was her way of coping.

The superior graffiti in the loo was an indication of the kind of people who frequented the blood clinic. The printed notice above the toilet said, ‘Do not put green paper towels in the bowl. It blocks the toilet.’ Underneath somebody had scribbled in quivering graffiti. ‘No, THEY block the loo.’ An angry dissenter had scrawled below that: ‘Wrong. ‘IT’ can refer to the action of putting the towels IN the bowl’. The writing was very quivery, the kind we associate with very old people. But it could have been written by any of the blood clinic attendees. Because whether you were aged 20 or a 100 we all had one thing in common – the shakes. But even if we were all quivering and crotchety, some were still passionate about the proper use of ‘it’ and ‘they’ in the English language.

20. ZOMBIELAND

2010-09-04T09:27:00.000-07:00

     ‘March with grief doth howl and rave’ was Shelley’s take on the month of March. Oh to have the energy to do a bit of howling and raving of my own that March! The daily dose of rat poison, beta-blockers, statins et al had a most ‘calming’ effect on my entire body. I was completely zonked out 24/7, a full time resident of Zombieland. But the doctor’s orders were to find ways to overcome the post stroke fatigue and walk a little every day. I could just about make the few blocks to Café Nero where I managed a ‘Hello, how are you?’ to Finula from Galway and the other European barristas who made my decaf Americano just the super-picky way I liked it.   I sat at the window watching the ‘world’ go by and hallucinating about being well again and rushing in for a takeout coffee on my way to work.
      One of the few ‘chats’ I had in March was in Café Nero with a woman called Brenda. The heating was on high and the café was very hot and sticky.   Brenda fanned herself and said:
      ‘I don’t know if it’s the temperature in here or whether I’m having a hot flash’.
      We both laughed. What else can you do when you’re on the wrong side of fifty? Taxes and death are inevitable. They should also add ‘menopause’. For women the only alternative to the menopause is wings. And I’m not referring to the ones you can buy in Boots.
      Brenda was the kind of woman who wanted to share what she was reading in the paper which by coincidence was an article on the manopause. It suggested that in the film ‘American Beauty’ the main character played by Kevin Spacey, had been going through the manopause.   Brenda waffled on about the female menopause rarely being discussed and never making headline news. She wanted to know if Hollywood had done a film on a par with ‘American Beauty’ that dealt with the menopause?
      ‘I don’t know,’ was my feeble contribution to the conversation.
      ‘Are you retired?’ Brenda then wanted to know.
      Just when you think things can’t get much worse! I explained that I was recovering from a stroke.
      ‘My husband had a stroke and died,’ said Brenda.
      It was very hard and very sad for her. Then she told me in excruciating detail about all her relatives who’d either had heart attacks or strokes.
      ‘Have you found that you’ve mellowed as a result of your stroke?’ she then queried.
       MELLOWED?   I felt like screaming at Brenda: ‘I hope to God the day never arrives when I’m mellow’. Mellow to me is what fine wines do in dusty cellars, maturing quietly for decades. Mellow? No way! I wanted to go cycling, dance the tango, be back at work, travelling, verbalising all day long, typing at 90 words a minute.
      ‘No, just too tired to chat sometimes,’ I said. Brenda understood, wished me a good recovery and left me.
      I wasn’t going mellow. But something much more sinister was happening in my brain. I was no longer interested in reading my usual fare in the Observer or the Guardian. Suddenly I’m sucking up articles in the Daily Mail like ’Rock and Roll Follies’. Normally I wouldn’t even read the headline to something like that. Now in Café Nero (papers supplied for your reading pleasure) I’m puzzled by an article with a picture of Mariah Carey who has long legs and sports a few shreds of clothing.
      Because I work in television, - sorry, ‘worked’ in tv -I’m usually up on trivia, but I wasn’t too sure what Mariah’s claim to fame was. The article mentioned that she was doing an item on MTV which involved stroking cats and dogs. The article did not explain why she was doing the ‘stroking’.   It only wanted to highlight the fact that when Mariah went to the station to be filmed, she turned to the director and informed him that she ‘didn’t do stairs’.
      The article never explained how the director solved that dilemma or if Mariah got up/got down the stairs. Did the Director have to lift her up the stairs? Did they strap her ass to a body rocket? And why didn’t this woman do stairs? However, what made me laugh out loud sitting in Café Nero was the line that Mariah had yelled at the DIRECTOR!   In tv the director is GOD! The rest who work as researchers, APs, producers, or in sound, camera and lighting are only in the fifty ninth place. If something goes wrong it’s always the researcher’s fault.   If something is brilliant, innovative, thrilling it’s the Director’s touch. In Hollywood the equivalent is the writer/director status. There’s the illuminating joke about the screenwriter watching a tv interview with Capra (‘A Wonderful Life’) where the interviewer gushes ad nauseum about the magical Capra touch and … the director laps it up and never once mentions his screenwriter. Next morning Capra receives 100 blank pages in the post with a note ‘Put the Capra touch to this!’
      When I read that article about Mariah Carey telling the director that she didn’t do stairs, my first thought was: ‘What did the director DO to the researcher?’ Obviously the researcher should have anticipated this problem and been aware that Mariah had a different approach to stairs than the rest of us. The director depended on her to be inspired enough to ask the obvious question: ‘Now, do you or don’t you do stairs?’
      TV research is very hard work especially if you’re doing it in four European languages like I was. But sometimes you do get the droll insightful moment. When I was interviewing the female bullfighter, Christina Sanchez, in Madrid just after she’d been gored by a bull the director wanted a close-up of Christina’s wound. I thought it gratuitous. But it was my job to ask Christina could she please pull her pants down so that we could film her wound. Christina mercifully had a sense of humour. She had been gored close to the area where some women have Brazilian waxings. No, she laughed. The Director then asked me to persuade her to change her mind. Not on that occasion, mate! But I did ask Christina, would being gored put her off bullfighting? Not one bit. She could hardly wait to heal and go out there again and face the bull. Her face was alight with enthusiasm at the prospect of going back to her work.    How I could relate to Christina now!
      I also missed the fun tales from the TV front – embellished tales of directors’ demands. One of my favourite true tales was about the director filming a local farmer in a hop field in Kent. The sky was a brilliant blue, the scenery lyrical. Unfortunately overhead the RAF were on manoeuvres screeching to and fro. It cast a pall over a lyrical item about the tranquil joys of the countryside. The director snapped at the researcher; ‘Hey you, get on the phone. Get them to stop. NOW’. Normally the researcher is expected to comply with the director’s every whim. But this was a request too far. The researcher snarled back: ‘Let me get this straight. You want me to call up the RAF, say ‘excuse me please but we’re doing an interview with a cow and a farmer in a field somewhere in Kent. Could you PLEASE call off those RAF planes IMMEDIATELY. The noise is ruining our interview’. Enough said!!!
      Time for a reality check. Work ranged from magical to maniacal and miserable. I personally know one researcher who prays that her onetime director - a particularly nasty piece of excrement - will one day be impregnated by alien vampires and then go on national television to tell her story. This director will obviously never again be offered bone fide serious work in tv. And not to work at what you love is on a par with residing in Zombieland.

19. BALD AND .... HOMELESS?

2010-08-29T12:45:00.000-07:00

      That February I would have preferred to be back in hospital, looked after, gruel 3 times a day, the bed linen changed every morning. The pillows, despite the plastic undercover, took on an amazing allure. Mark, God bless him, came upstairs every day to see what I wanted. All I wanted from life was to be the old me, full of zip and verve, back at work, learning, researching new topics, travelling, writing, having a belly laugh. I survived by reminding myself that real life was merely being postponed for a few more weeks at the most. No problem really!
      On Feb.27 with hope percolating in my veins I saw the neurologist expecting ‘good news’. He’d wave his hands over me and hey presto the old me would reappear! Instead I was informed that I now had high cholesterol and high blood pressure. I thought only Americans had high cholesterol. How could I possibly have high cholesterol? I don’t eat butter and my passion for sausages ebbed away in the 80’s. But it seems instead of a healthy trust fund, I had ‘inherited’ high cholesterol the fast route to another stroke.   I now had to take Propanolol and statins along with the rat poison.
      At the end of that horrible February I finally faced the brutal reality of my ‘new life’. I had lost my TV career, my energy, my singing voice, my left hand, my balance. I didn’t eat much but still my body mysteriously ballooned hiding all traces of years of gym attendance. I longed sorrowfully for my lost life. But it was the handful of hair on my pillow every morning that pierced my heart with shafts of pain.    By the end of February half my hair had fallen out. And I was never in the Queen Kong category.
      I have a thing for hair, being the only one in the family who didn’t inherit wads of the stuff. In my 20s I had a fervent dream of riding a horse through an idyllic forest with a long, luscious mane of hair which would rival that that of the horse. A lot of us got this ambition from David Lean’s film, ‘Ryan’s Daughter’. Long hair and horse riding lead to wild sex in a bluebell grove.
      With the exception of the bluebell sex bit, it was easy to make that particular dream come true. In the ‘60s if you needed extra hair, you just went out and bought a ‘fall’ of authentic hair that blended in with your own colour. You wore a narrow scarf to cover the seam connecting your own hair and the fall’s hair. Everybody did it. And it looked SO real. For a very brief period in my life I had lots and lots and lots of cascading hair. I took riding lessons. I rode those horses wearing my ‘fall’ … until the day they put me on a horse the size of a mountain and the bloody thing bolted. The instructor shouted at me to get back on the horse. I did. For the very last time. ‘Falls’ then went out of fashion.   I accepted my thin hair.
      But now I was looking at bald. At the end of February scooping up that morning hair from my pillow, I finally gave in. I admitted to myself that I had been struck down with what most regard as a shameful disease. An illness solely associated with ancient old crocks!   I’d had a STROKE! It was truly unbelievable. Some Irish call a stroke The Big Turn and it was certainly a turn for the worst. So I’d better brace myself and face facts. I’d seen the effect it had on Mammy. She lost her voice for months. When it finally came back she talked and talked incessantly. It changed her from a vivacious, funny being to a worrywart who was constantly aware and ashamed of having lost parts of her brain.   How often had I said it? “The one and only thing I truly dreaded in life was having a stroke and not being able to talk.” Well, I’d had the stroke but was still able to talk. I’d better start making the best of it. I thought it was the worst day of my entire life. But actually it wasn’t. The next day I got the e-mail from my semi ‘friend’ and landlady. She gave me a month’s notice.
      Great! Now I was looking at bald … and homeless!

18. LOVE'S LABOUR'S ....LOST.

2010-08-29T05:46:00.000-07:00

     What a cruel February! Mercifully Mark did all my shopping. For the first time in my life I ate precooked ready meals like a very old person who exists on instant soup and sliced bread. I existed in some kind of time warp. One minute it was Monday. Next time I checked it was Thursday. I could almost taste my life evaporating in front of my eyes.   February dwindled away in a sick fog.
      The only ‘active’ thing I did that February was thank my colleagues on BBC Correspondent for the beautiful flowers and the funny card. It took me over 3 hours to compose and write a succinct e-mail: ‘I’ve now been discharged from hospital. I had a vertebral dissection. The prognosis is excellent. Thank you so much for all your lovely messages.’   The vital sub-text to this e-mail was, ‘I’m OK matey’, ‘I’m NOT sick’. If you weren’t OK you’d never get another job in tv. They wouldn’t even bother to chew you before they spat you out.
      When it comes to work everyone puts their best foot forward. How many people go to work with their dentures dangling from their ears, or their necklaces stuffed up their noses for a change of pace? Although when I worked on my first BBC Arts programme, I came across a few who wore daft things. One producer preferred lingerie to clothes and her accessory of choice was a huge leopard skin hat. Another director wore permanently creased shirts and trousers that looked as if they’d had a too close encounter with the hoover during the night. One researcher panting to be a director only needed a hardhat to go with her stained dungarees and her Doc Martens and they’d have immediately cast her as a Dickensian bricklayer.   Being new to London, I didn’t know that this was ‘the edgy British individualism’ they wrote about in newspapers. After years working in Manhattan, Brussels and Paris where everybody dressed ‘properly’ to go to work, the tv artsy crowd to me just looked sloppy and weird. Black was the predominant colour on that programme – but only as far as clothes were concerned. If the 40 odd staff had suddenly been summoned to attend a solemn funeral where black was de rigour, it would not have posed a problem.
      Despite this laissez-faire in matter of dress, face was still maintained on that artsy programme. ‘Pity’ the most despicable of emotions, was reserved for people with problems - drugs, alcohol, bad breath, no creative talent, ageing, balding, etc.   When people on the arts programme came to work looking like bone fide circus performers they were dressing for the job. Slipping into work armour, the way the knights of old always donned their chain mail to avoid their hearts being pierced by swords. In the workplace there is no room for pity.
      When I sent that e-mail to the Correspondent office I was subconsciously protesting that there was no need to pity me. Just a little interesting hiccup in hospital!   I’d worked hard for 10 years to get to the dizzy level of BBC associate Producer. I hadn’t slept my way up. I wouldn’t have minded sometimes. But nobody asks after 31.   I was middle aged.   I didn’t look like the back of a bus. Then again my looks wouldn’t induce the bus controller to drool and forget to give me a ticket. You rarely got a written recommendation from your former producer, director, executive producer, because they were always too busy to write it. Word of mouth and a quick phone call to your former employer is the way TV people got references. I was only as good as the work I’d done that morning.
      I anticipated what an interview would be like the next time I applied for documentary work.
      ‘Any health problems?’
       ‘Nothing serious. Except a bit of a blood clot to the brain.’
      I mentally practised all my answers for the next interview. But in my heart of hearts I knew there would be no next interview because nobody on an expensive documentary would risk me. Months later I admitted to myself why I had sent that one e mail to Correspondent.    I was still in denial about having a stroke. In my case I’d had an inconvenient ‘vertebral dissection’. More than anything else in the world I wanted to keep doing interesting work. I still wanted to be ‘one of them’ and not a duff handed weakling. But my pitiable attempt at protesting that ‘I was fine’ by sending that email backfired. Those smart world current affairs experts check words they don’t know. The long attractive sounding ‘vertebral dissection’ was nothing more than a stroke – a rare, unlucky one. But a stroke nonetheless!
      Forget about sending pathetic emails.   Kiss your career adieu, Brigitte! Watch a lifetime of work, effort and knowledge being swilled down the toilet! And don’t forget to say ‘cheese’ while you’re doing it.

17. VALENTINE'S DAY IN MAGICAL PRAGUE

2010-08-26T13:36:00.000-07:00

Shoulda, coulda, dinna.

      I should have asked a Social Services employee to please call me a local cab and could have mentioned Christies. I didn’t. Not being able to walk those short few blocks home was something I wasn’t ready to accept. As a result of my stupidity, ages later I was still stranded at the bottom of my stairs unable to get up, clutch those banisters, heave myself upstairs and onto the sofa.
      I gazed in a daze of fatigue at those banisters. Could it really have been only a year ago to the day I was palpitating with excitement about a different kind of banister or to be completely accurate a ‘balustrade’? This was the second Czech word I ever learnt – ‘zábradlí’.   Such a useful word! Especially since I can count as zero the number of times I’ve ever uttered ‘balustrade’ in English! ‘Divadlo’ (theatre), more my interest and passion, was the first Czech word I learnt. So where’s the connection to me sitting like an aging dying dolphin at the bottom of those stairs staring at the banisters and thinking of balustrades, divadlos, and Valentine’s Day in Prague ’99? Answer: 365 days earlier to the hour I was hopping off a plane in Prague. It was a Sunday and the next day I would begin a gruelling ten day recce for a tv documentary on the 10th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, the Czech episode in BBC Correspondent’s ‘Freedom’s Battle’.
      Leaping off that plane on 14 Feb 1999 I was more than ready to make up for my youthful ignorance. This time there were no lacunae in my knowledge of Czech affairs – or so I thought. Hey, you want to keep an ‘intelligent’ job as a ‘freelancer’ at the sacred BBC when you’re beyond your sell by date like myself, you’d better know more than most. I knew all about the November ’89 Velvet Revolution. Months spent studying every theatre in Prague, Czech history, films, plays and local lore will do that for most people. Not to mention the endless hours on the phone (lateral thinking!!) and triple checking the facts with all the experts who took the time to enlighten me further. This ‘revolution’ which had toppled Communism was a result of Gorbachev’s Perestroika, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, student demonstrations outside all over Prague, strikes and serious political debates inside Prague theatres. In November 1989, the main location where Czech politics would change forever was played out in the Divadlo Bez Zábradlí (theatre without a balustrade).
       My agenda for that 10 day recce was full of meetings with theatre directors, dissidents, actors, playwrights, members of Charter 77 and the Civic Forum, the Samizdat founders, Mr. R the BBC man in Prague and President Havel’s press people. Also on the schedule were ‘informal meetings’ with important politicians who were former dissidents/window cleaners under the Communist regime. Havel wrote plays for the theatre of the absurd. He didn’t have far to look for absurdist ideas in a country where window cleaning was one of the inventive punishments meted out to brilliant dissident scientists, writers and professors. The Divadlo na Zábradlí (theatre on the balustrade) was also on my busy agenda. Back in the 60’s Havel had worked in this theatre and his plays were always part of the repertoire.
      I took the bus from the airport to my hotel – a former Communist barracks. Colleagues who had reported from Prague down the years had advised me to avoid cabs. Not because of the extortionist prices but the plethora of porn (ads for call girls and boys) plastered across the dashboard. The minibus drove close to the Staromestské námestí and I had my first glimpse of the magical old town square with the famous astrological clock that had bored me decades earlier. I dumped my luggage in the hotel/former barracks, put on my boots and raced out to explore the new Prague. I checked out the two theatres with and without the balustrade so I wouldn’t be late for appointments the next day. But after that my time was my own.
      I revisited all the places I’d snubbed as a bored youth. The medieval turrets of the Old Town Square had little lights that twinkled through the early twilight. It was like wandering around a fairy land that only exists in a painter’s mind. It started to snow and within minutes this changed to grey slush. But I was in love with Czech slush.    I could have kept on walking for hours but I was now starving and my boots were soaked.
      I had deliberately saved my appetite by not eating lunch on the plane (or the slop that passes itself of as food on most airlines). During my strolls around the cobbled backstreets and along the waterfront with its stunning view of Prague Castle I had singled out several beautiful restaurants – not just for the architecture and unique décor but because they had exactly what I wanted on the menu - real roast duck, with plain potatoes, sauerkraut and NO gravy - washed down with Czech pivo (beer, the 3rd word I learnt in Czech).

The restaurants that made it to my list also had red balloons and I wondered if this was a Czech tradition the ‘experts’ hadn’t enlightened me about. It was just gone 6 o’clock when I walked back to the restaurant that was top of my list. The place was empty at this early hour. But it was open so I’d probably get my jaws around that roast duck even faster.
      ‘Sorry, Madame.’
      ‘Excuse me?’
      They couldn’t let me in? Every empty table was reserved for later.   A light bulb finally went on in my brain. That’s what all those red balloons were for.   It was Feb. 14 – Valentine’s Day. Since this didn’t feature in our Velvet Revolution documentary about writers, artists and intellectuals it hadn’t even registered on my radar. I explained to the maitre d’ that I would only need 40 minutes max to have my dinner.
      ‘No. Sorry, Madame.’
      Onto the next restaurant! Again completely empty but all reserved for later! By the time I’d been rejected by 5 attractive empty restaurants I began to harbour doubts about Magical Prague. They didn’t want any single person that night, thank you! Only couples allowed in on romance’s big night!   It’s a ‘couples day’ a friend used to say about Valentine’ Day. So how come we have no Saint Singles to help when you’re working alone in a foreign country, starving and never going to eat in a Mcdonalds?   Down the years it has often struck me that if you’re single, or alone or a woman (God forbid if you happen to be all three at once!) you’re not expected to get as hungry as other folk.
      A very expensive Seafood restaurant finally let the lone alien dine on their premises but not before they hummed and hawed over their non existent reservation list. Seafood in any landlocked Central European city costs two arms and two legs. No wonder the place (NO red balloons, NO roast duck and an ancient review from the NY Times!!!) was empty. The food was overpriced, overcooked and dull but they get an eternal thumbs up from the hungry woman they let in to eat on their premises in the city of Romance festooned with red hearts and red balloons on Valentine’s Day.   Of course if I had chosen to stay in a ‘false’ modern overpriced hotel with a restaurant instead of checking myself into what I erroneously thought would be more authentic (my hotel/former Communist barracks had no restaurant) I could have returned to my hotel. But I consoled myself that at least I hadn’t been daft enough to book myself into the hostel hotel/former secret service prison where the dissident Havel had been locked up for a night!
      In the seafood restaurant I was allotted a table for two along a banquette still waiting for occupants.   It stayed empty for ages. I was finishing my entree when an Irish couple sat down at the tiny table next to me on the banquette. Obviously I couldn’t help overhearing every word they said. When the man asked if the fish I was finishing came with any vegetables I brought them up to speed - discreetly. It was after all Valentine’s Day and I would most certainly observe the etiquette of couples’ romance and not intrude on their day. But as it turned out they were a delightful couple based in Geneva but celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary and eager to chat. They insisted I share their wine. Go ahead, twist my arm! They told me about the real Geneva and I divulged the historical nuggets I’d picked up for my research about Czech theatres with and without balustrades.
      A year later did I dream in my very worst nightmares I’d be smiling ironically as I heaved myself upstairs clutching a completely different kind of ‘balustrade’?

16. VALENTINE'S DAY - LONDON

2010-08-05T17:28:00.000-07:00

    Valentine’s Day 2000, was one of those foulest Winter days you only get in London. The cutting rain snapped bits out of me as I clawed the short distance to my GP. This time I didn’t take a cab because the neurologist had urged - ‘walking is beneficial’. Sitting in the doctor’s surgery waiting for the sick cert required by the Social Services I noticed all the soppy cards with hearts and the bouquets of flowers on the reception desk. You simply couldn’t escape effing Valentine’s Day. My thoughts suddenly switched back to the same day the previous year. Valentine’s Day 1999 in Magical Prague - a day with a definite difference!
      Prague was on my mind as I staggered from the surgery with my sick cert and made my way to the Social Services to pick up my claim form. But it wasn’t Valentine’s Day 1999 I was remembering but my first ever ‘business trip’ there in 1972.   At the time I was financing my studies at the University of Vienna by working for the Irish Export Board with two gems of bosses Mr. O and Mr. H, two very enlightened, hardworking Irishmen who treated me as their equal – a rare occurrence in those benighted days. There was however one thing we never agreed on. I was jealous of the ‘glamorous trips’ they took with Aeroflot to Leningrad, Moscow, Bucharest, Prague, et al. They told me I had nothing to envy. Those business trips were ‘beyond grim and dire.’ Oh sure! When they topped up their luggage with tins of sardines, tissues, coffee, instant packet soup for those trips to Communist zones I put this down to the fussiness of the pampered Irish male. You’d think they were on their way to jail! When they returned looking beyond exhausted and a lighter shade of green I put this down to their wading through champagne, vodka and caviar.
      Then one glorious day Mr. O said since I’d been so brilliantly efficient setting up a trade conference in Prague I should go there and tie up the ends. I was delirious with delight. Mr. H’s remark that another few days working in Prague’s pork gravy dumpling nightmare would finish him off entirely only confirmed my opinion of their foody fussiness.   On that thrilling first ‘business’ flight from Vienna to Prague I was the only woman on a plane full of business men which in my youthful flirtatious mind added mucho frisson. But the fact that alcoholic drinks were also on offer and being consumed!!! at that ungodly hour on that flight only convinced me further that the lads were having a whale of a time on those journeys to Eastern Europe.

     In Prague airport I was picked up by a young woman just a little older than myself. First she insisted on giving me a quick tour of the city before whisking me off to a gorgeous castle where we dined in golden splendour. After lunch we had to stand for ages and almost all alone in the Old Town Square waiting for the astronomical clock from The Middle Ages to strike the hour. When it did, the only thing I could recognize in the tableau was a macabre figure of death marching out to the chimes.
      ‘There’s a lot on my agenda which needs to be confirmed by the Czech trade delegation’, I said politely to remind her of my important ‘business’ status.
     What I really wanted to tell her was that as a tourist guide in Munich (another student gig) I’d seen enough of any old Medieval clock with dancing figurines, wedding banquet and knights on horseback to last me at least 77 more lifetimes. Not to mention that the Marienplatz in Munich was much more popular with people than this grey, grim empty square in Prague. But since she was the liaison person on my first ‘business trip’, politesse oblige. Instead of me blurting out the truth and insisting on ‘important business meetings’ we spent that afternoon strolling cobbled streets and visiting ancient Churches. When my guide asked if I would prefer to see another famous Church or a typical student tavern take a wild guess which one I chose. Here was finally something I could relate to – a Medieval Studentenkellar full of people my own age smoking, debating, drinking, laughing. If this was the Czech way of mixing business with pleasure, bring it on!   We had only taken a few sips of our drinks when I asked the fatal question.
      ‘But why did Jan Palach really do it?’
      Hadn’t he been just as young as the laughing students in this beer cellar when he poured petrol all over his body and set fire to himself on Wenceslas Square? All of us students in Vienna often wondered what could possibly drive a young lad like that to burn himself to death for some stupid political reason. Could she enlighten me, please? It was a very innocent question. At that time what did I really know about totalitarian regimes and Eastern European politics except that they were under Communist rule and loved marching and waving red flags around on certain days of the year.
      Her reaction to my question was startling. Visible fear swept over her face. She put down her drink and looked fearfully over her shoulder like somebody in a spy movie.
      ‘But why did he do it?’   I pursued. ‘He was only 21.’
      Was he murdered maybe? I said something along the lines of ‘well he must have been pretty desperate to kill himself like that. I mean student life in Prague can’t have been THAT rough by the looks of this student cellar’.
      Her eyes suddenly filled to the brim with tears. She said in a sobbing but controlled tone that it was ‘most tragic’ and she’d prefer if we didn’t speak about it. I thought maybe the memory was too much for her. Then she regained control of herself and said sternly that while I was in Prague I should avoid any other ‘political questioning’. It would be many years before I could fully understand her puzzling behaviour.
      The next two days were full of tours, lunches, official dinners and a reception where finally the trade people agreed to the ‘agenda’ and more than one told me to ‘relax’. Several smiling officials ‘ordered’ me not to be so serious and have more champagne and caviar. I didn’t have to wait decades to understand where those leering guys were coming from. To them I was ‘just a bit of skirt!’
      Arriving back at the office I was beyond touched that my two bosses had bought a Sacher Torte (A Viennese speciality of dark chocolate layered cake which costs a fortune) to welcome me back, convinced I hadn’t seen regular food in three days. They refused to believe that I’d been wined and dined on pheasant, pigeon, venison, salmon accompanied by wine, beer, vodka, champagne and treated as an ‘Irish prostitute’ (my words).   For the duration of my brief time there I refused to believe their version of the hardship of travelling with 70’s Aeroflot to remote parts of the Soviet Union with their tins of sardines and loo paper.
      Years later when I was ‘mature’, having travelled extensively in Eastern Europe and knowing exactly how gruelling those business trips were for Mr. O and Mr. H I cringed at my own youthful ignorance. It was horrifying to think there once was a time when I didn’t know all about the Prague Spring, what drove Jan Palach to kill himself or why my young Communist ‘minder’ suppressed her sobs and tears.
      Hobbling home through the nasty London rain with my forms and my sick cert, thinking of Prague ’72, I wondered about those self important officials who had regarded me as ‘a sex object’ instead of a ‘serious business woman’. What would they now be doing in a post Communist enlightened Prague?
      Would they still be urging the knackered old lady I had suddenly become to stop being so serious and have more champagne and caviar?

15. TWENTY GOLDEN YEARS AGO

2010-07-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

During a normal London February bleak twilight triumphs all day. Around 9 a.m a watery facsimile of daylight struggles through. At 14.30 total darkness and night closes in. It was no different in 2000. Lying in bed listening to the rain lashing against the windows there were minor consolations - I didn’t have to go out and brave the elements. But those London February nights were interminable, gloomy and full of awfulness. At night I kept the light on to keep fear at bay like a kid afraid of what nasty surprises the dark might bring.

The poem TWENTY GOLDEN YEARS AGO by James Clarence Mangan eloquently reflects the awfulness of Feb. 2000 when my lovely life turned to muck.

      Tick-tick! Tick-tick! – Not a sound save time’s.
      And the wind-gust as it drives the rain.
      Tortured torturer of reluctant rhymes,
      Go to bed, and rest thine aching brain!
      Sleep! No more the dupe of hopes or schemes.
      Soon thou sleepest where the thistles blow
      Curious anticlimax of thy dreams
      Twenty golden years ago.

But there is always light. Mary reminded me of this when she called every night. I had something glorious to look forward to. I was going to be a blue bridesmaid in the Bahamas on 1 July. Of course I’d be well by then. Keep taking the rat poison, listen to the doctors. Rest! Sleep! Relax! As Chief Bridesmaid she was looking after everything: arranging the flights, booking the accommodation. She re-assured me the wedding co-ordinator had found the right colour blue so the bridesmaids wouldn’t clash with St. Andrew’s distinctive blue stain glass windows. She had bought three blue bridesmaids’ dresses on approval. She was thinking of accessories. In no time at all I’d be well again and Noelle, Mary and I – the three blue bridesmaids would be wafting down the aisle in Nassau. I really had nothing to worry about.

Oh yeah? I’d have had a lot less to worry about IF ONLY … I’d listened to A. the stroke co-ordinator who had sat by my bed daily in Charing Cross trying to convince me to get ‘a social worker’ to help me after I was ‘released’. ‘If only’ is probably one of the saddest words in the English language next to “almost”. ‘If only’ I hadn’t argued with A. and taken his advice. He kept stressing I’d need help in the next couple of weeks/months such as somebody to do my shopping for me. I was never so insulted. He was implying I was an incapable old crock? ‘Skueeze me A. But I’m not that kind of person. I don’t NEED anyone to do my shopping. I DON’T WANT any social worker.’
      If only I hadn’t rejected everything A. offered I really could have concentrated fully on recovering and being a ‘blue bridesmaid’. But on the ward, high on Heparin, was I bothered about the practicalities of applying for State help, or braving the elements to go out and buy loo paper? Short answer – no way! Especially since I was in denial about having a stroke in the first place.
      A week after Una left, I called up the Social Security Services to tell them how ill I was. Could I please sign on over the phone?
      “No!”
       My discharge from Charing Cross hospital for a stroke wasn’t enough. I would have to get a substantiating sick note from my GP.   As long as I didn’t wait for longer than a month, my claim could be backdated. But I would have to go to my GP in person. So if only I’d known how much help I was going to need in the months to come I’d have said “Two dozen please!” to A.’s offer of a social worker.
      I got worse instead of better. Much worse! I could barely walk. It took me an eternity to totter from the bed to the toilet in that tiny studio. So I slept on the couch because it was a few feet closer to the loo. However in order to comply with the DSS one month requirement for a sick cert I dragged myself out of bed on Sunday the 13th of February. Blind with fatigue, I struggled the short distance to Café Nero – a practice run for the trip to the GP the following day.    I sat at the window. The young woman on the stool next to me starting chatting to me - an extraordinary event in tight lipped London.
      She was a foreigner - from Croatia with an obvious need to communicate. She told me that she’d been shopping for her boyfriend - just like that!
      “Why?”   I managed to croak.
      “Because tomorrow is Valentine’s Day”.
      I’d completely forgotten about Valentine’s Day. Tut tut! The things we single non dating, semi dead women are prone to forget! She pulled out a pair of shorts with Kenny from South Park printed on it.   The logo said: “Only my bones are heavy”. She teetered on the stool she was laughing so hard. She then told me about her skinny English boyfriend and how ugly she thought the English were. She commented on all the people passing by the window.
      “Oh, just look how ugly everybody is”. Then she turned to me in sudden, abject contrition.
      “Oh my God, I’m so terribly sorry”.
      “It’s OK. I’m Irish”, I said.
      Whereupon she immediately wanted to know all about the Northern Ireland question. In my condition I’d have preferred to decapitate myself on the spot than dwell the intricacies of the ‘Irish Question’. I suggested she tell me instead all about the Croatian situation. Her demeanour changed instantly. The laughing girl shopping for her boyfriend and buying him Kenny’s shorts gazed at me with a face suffused with sorrow. Lord only knows what horrors she’d seen during the recent wars.
      ‘It’s Ok. What would you like to talk about instead?’ I asked.
      ‘Valentine’s Day,’ she replied instantly reverting to her previous bubbly persona. ‘D’you like Valentine’s Day?
      It’s a container load of shite, cheap marketing I would normally have replied.
      ‘Love it,’ I said and let her waffle to her heart’s content about the joys of love in London.

14. AUREVOIR BONHEUR

2010-07-23T13:26:00.000-07:00

     Hospital life had fascinating facets. When visitors came I was thrilled to flaunt my new knowledge of Heparin, the blood thinner. I’d floor them with the detail that next up on my prescription menu was rat poison - Warfarin. However, Vitamin K negated the effects of Warfarin so no overdosing on broccoli, spinach or deep greens. I found all this new knowledge riveting. 9 months later still knocking back the rat poison, I’d be less entranced.
      Amazingly there weren’t any Irish nurses on the ward with the exception of Sister who was first generation English. But Australia, Lithuania, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, England, Lesotho, Sweden, Jamaica etc were all represented. It was a South African nurse who cured me of my fear of blood. We chatted one evening while she changed my Heparin cartridge. I told her I was a real coward and couldn’t stand the sight of blood. She admitted that at first she too had the same problem which I thought was rather unusual for a nurse. But she was cured by working in Casualty in Johannesburg especially on a Friday night. She gave me a graphic, dramatic re-enactment of machete severed ears, cheeks, eyeballs flying all over the place while she waded ankle deep through blood.   Thanks to the South African nurse I got over my fear of blood.   My little speck of blood spotting when they changed my Heparin line was just so tame in comparison!
      On my last day in hospital a Polish woman was admitted. She’d had a stroke and lost her speech. Her relatives and friends came at visiting time and sat around her bed. She cried, they cried. She tried to speak but no recognisable sound came out. The nurses spent hours by her bed trying to contact her daughter who was holidaying abroad. She tried to thank them but failed to conquer the simple word ‘thanks’.
      That same afternoon an elderly English woman was also admitted to the ward. She announced to all and sundry that she had collapsed the night before. Something or other with her heart. Her fusspot son had called the ambulance. Within 30 minutes she knew everybody’s social, medical and love history.   She was like a character from a film about the London blitz where the women saved the day by doing the essentials like giving birth, burying the dead, re-building homes, caring for the sick and making endless pots of tea. Even the speechless one was no problem for this elderly ‘busybody’. She settled down on her bed, picked up the cards with the letters … ‘a’, ‘p’, ‘d’, ‘l’ and made her repeat these speech exercises. A grateful smile crept into the silent one’s eyes.
      When Una helped me home from Charing Cross, the grey-haired busybody had fully settled into her new role of tutor to the mute patient. The horrible look of dread had ebbed away from the silent one’s eyes. They were still practising and laughing at their attempts to conquer a few letters of the alphabet when I left the ward. The silent patient even gave me a wave, which was full of optimism. Had I been able, I would have galloped out of that ward. The amount of pain I had seen in those 2 weeks on the neuro ward was just too much for anybody to tolerate, or at least somebody like me who’d never been exposed to such horrors and tragedies.
     Alas and alack, joy does not linger. Una was gone in a few days leaving me with enough food to feed half of London and addicted to Marks and Sparks onion soup - Una’s idea of haute cuisine for the single woman. Una left and the nightmare that would linger for endless months began.
       Up the violins and Kleenex at the ready!

13. BONJOUR BONHEUR

2010-07-22T04:36:00.000-07:00

      As it turned out Mary came down with the flu and dispatched her youngest daughter, Una, 21, over from Dublin to help me make the transition from Charing Cross neuro ward back home.
      Una arrived onto that ghastly ward her walkman ear-piece dangling, wearing a snazzy rucksack, juggling a giant decaf Americano and a huge carton of carrot and apple juice for the old aunt in the bed.   If all the statues at the V & A - like my favourite ones the Three Graces, or Psyche & Aphrodite - had sprung to life and blended into one they couldn’t have looked lovelier.   Una was a miracle of health, fun, youth and beauty. I was flooded with unexpected joy!
      As far as Una was concerned, first things first.    A quick call to the ‘girls’. They were meeting in Fulham that evening. Una is a Celtic Tigresse and can converse in four European languages (one of them being Irish). The new Irish diaspora has come a long way from coffin ships and sad songs sung by the broken-hearted, down-trodden immigrants of yore. Now, instead of howling tears and hauling sausages and bacon all over the globe, the young Irish can work at home and see the world on their terms.
      Her social engagements confirmed, Una flashed into action. What did I need? A cup of tea from the kitchen down the hall? Done! Except if I wanted a Kitkat with my tea I’d have to forget it! The shop was on the ground floor. The lifts were ‘a disgrace’. It had taken her 20 minutes to get up to my 10th floor. Then Una went around the ward asking the other inmates if there were any other takers for tea. There were times during the day we’d have given our left leg for a cup of tea but that journey down the hall was almost impossible for us. It was Una’s no fuss, cheerful, no pity attitude that was such a welcome tonic.   It wasn’t a chore for her to help me out of hospital. “Not at all. It really wasn’t a pain to come to London”, she said endearingly with a twinkle in her eyes. “Not at the weekend.”
      Watching Una bustling around the ward, doling out the very welcome cups of fresh, hot tea accompanied with smiles and chat, it was like seeing a whole orchard burst into flower right in front of your eyes. Now I finally understood what my parents felt when they first caught sight of the youthful moi on my annual trips home from abroad.   We didn’t have a car and Daddy used to hire Mickey Collins to pick me up at Shannon airport or Limerick train station 40 miles away. To my young eyes it was a dreadful waste of money when I could easily have taken the bus. But that would have delayed my arrival by a few hours. A year is a very long time for a parent not to see the fantastic eldest daughter!
      Mary once told me the story of how she and Daddy were waiting in the ancient railway restaurant in Limerick for the arrival of my train from Dublin. The train was delayed. The miracle back then in the 60’s would have been a train arriving on time.   Suddenly the announcement came that the Dublin train was in the station.
      ‘Daddy jumped up, knocked over the table and just RAN OUT of there leaving everything scattered all over the floor. He didn’t even stop to put the table back and pick the stuff up.’
      It puzzled me for years. Why did our very proper, staid father LEAP UP, and TOPPLE a table in anticipation of the arrival of his eldest daughter? It was so out of character for him.
      My joyous reaction to Una’s healthy Grande Entrance onto that very sick neuro ward reminded me of that table overturning incident. Thirty years later I finally understand why my father did that. He was simply jumping for joy, the way my heart was overjoyed when Una came to take me ‘home’ (a short cab ride away in Hammersmith) out of that place of appalling illness.
      ‘Joy’ is a wonderful feeling, though it does not get you up and dancing the tango when you’re hooked to a Heparin drip. ‘Joy’ is not a word people toss about these days like dot.com commerce, fear of commitment, or surfing the net. ‘Joy’ rarely crops up in everyday speech. And it was only when Una walked onto the ward to “help me home” that I finally understood what the word ‘joy’ meant. I had to be hospitalised with a blood clot to the brain before I could experience the ephemeral and fascinating feeling of great joy.

12. OH THE JOYS OF HOSPITAL LIFE1

2010-07-19T14:35:00.000-07:00

Oh the joys of hospital life! It’s Christmas all over again. A constant stream of visitors ply me with books, bags of roquette, quince cheese, handmade chocolates, decaf Americano with just one and a half hints of milk the way I like it from Cafe Nero, forest fruit yogurt. What wonderful thoughtful friends I have! Unfortunately they all desperately need to have their eyes checked. They gush how ‘well’, and ‘good’ I look. As opposed to whom? Bette Davis at her most deranged in ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane’?

Flowers arrived. More flowers than I’d ever had in my entire life. Making up for all those Valentine’s when only the telephone, gas and electricity bills were delivered. A., the stroke co-ordinator noticed the bank of blooms on my bedside table. “Holland must be bare today,” he observed.

Along with the giant bouquet from BBC Correspondent I got a card with messages from all the people I had worked with. Over the years I’d filled out the get well, the birthday, engagement, wedding, condolence, new baby cards. Like everybody else, I’d wracked my brains to come up with something witty and pithy. Now I was on the receiving end, trying to make out the illegible signatures and the messages. I was very moved by that collective card and almost had a ‘little cry’. I nearly had a full blown sob attack when I saw that the card was accompanied by sheets of old expenses. Although approved by the unit manager, the BBC finance department had sent them back. Could I please fill out two other forms “for the easy (sic) of the financial department”. It would be 9 more months before I could understand those simple figures.

The phone by my bed never stopped ringing. After a week I called my family in Ireland to tell them I was fine – just a case of vertebral dissection, bit of a blood clot to the brain. I didn’t see the point in long distance worrying. Mammy ‘a born worrier’ never forgave me for not telling her about the appendix episode during my student days in Vienna. I had deprived her of worrying about me. My defence was I didn’t want to upset her. But if I died during the night in Charing Cross it would be a different kettle of fish. So I alerted my family.

Every night from then on I had long distance phone calls from family in Ireland and US, where I worried about the costs involved for them. Sister Mary in Dublin said she was coming to London to help me with the transition home. I thought she was absolutely nuts. But Mary, a qualified nurse, was more au fait with the awful significance of a stroke. She also had a better idea of what help I would need, not only then, but in the dreadful months to come.

Sister Patricia in the US called. Last week on the phone we’d chatted about her upcoming wedding on 1 July to Rev. Jim whose parish is the Bahamas. Patricia, the youngest sister is on the right side of 50 – like Madonna. She’s a perfectionist and wants her first time at the altar to be faultless. Brother John will walk her down the aisle. Mary, Noelle (sister in law but more a sister) and myself will be the three bridesmaids – the Three Graces.

Canova chose alabaster for his Three Graces. But Patricia wanted her 3 bridesmaids to dress in blue. That way we would blend in harmoniously with the stained glass windows of St. Andrew’s Church in Nassau. When the afternoon sun shines through it’s a special startling blue. Patricia has sent a sample of the stained glass blue to Mary (her Chief bridesmaid) to make sure the bridesmaids wouldn’t clash with the windows. Mary in Dublin is in charge of finding three blue bridesmaids’ dresses for 3 totally different figures – the largest of which was now in Charing Cross Hospital.

I told Patricia to stop calling and worrying about me. I was fine, great, no problem. I was also out of my face on the blood diluting drug. The only time I thought, “Yes, it would be nice to have Mary around to help me for a few days” was when I’d be clawing my way out of the bath. Otherwise I was absolutely convinced that the minute the Heparin drip and I were no longer hooked up, I’d go home and that would be that. How wrong could any Heparin hyped woman be?

11. HASTA LA VISTA TANGO!

2010-07-16T13:18:00.000-07:00

A blood clot on its way to my brain was a bit of shock. But not being able to get out of that first bath in Charing Cross was much higher on the Surprize Richter Scale. One side of my body simply refused to do what it had always done – i.e. stand up and step out of the bath. Instead I was stranded and helpless as a cat on a raft. The nurses were within yelling distance. But I hadn’t reached that nadir yet. Baffled and bewildered, I let all the water run out and then slowly tried to heave myself over the edge of the bath like a beached whale. That didn’t work.

I then got on all fours and threw the good leg over the edge of the bath until it reached land on the other side. Marvellous! Splayed naked across the side of the bath like a drunken hobo on a horse in a comic Western! What next? The options were: scream for the nurse, keep clinging on or slither slowly down the side like a gigantic snail, very carefully so as not to brain myself completely! Success! Panting on the bath mat from the exertion it dawned on me that I wouldn’t be tangoing the nights away in Buenos Aires in the immediate future. Perfecting the tango had been another millennium goal. Aurevoir tango and those battalions of jaw droppingly gorgeous mature Argentinos lining up to partner me!

Back in the bed and hooked up once more to my Heparin drip it was doubly distressing to ponder what was happening to my body with only the appalling curtains to focus on. These were made of the same ghastly material as the ones in Casualty. When the doctors shone lights in my eyes during their examinations they always asked me to focus on a single point on the curtain. It would have easier on my eyeballs to stare at the entrails of a rotting rat instead of those curtains. How could hospital ‘designers’ inflict this additional pain on patients? Those coloured squares, dizzy cubes and weird angularities could only have been dreamt up by a very bad Picasso imitator out of his skull on LSD and half a barrel of stout.

I had a lot of time to study those curtains while pondering why I couldn’t get out of the bath, why I staggered on my way to the loo and why my left hand no longer obeyed my simplest command. One morning when I picked up my plate of muesli it had ended up behind my ear on the pillow. To distract myself I thought about those curtains. The pattern itself was so dreadful it looked as if the designer had vomited all over the original design. This vomit had then been blended into the design. They had probably run off 50 miles of this puke pattern before the mistake was discovered. How to shift it? Where? Some bright spark probably had the inspiration to sell it to hospitals because – ‘hey, the hospital inmates would be too zonked out to notice.’ Now we, the poor patients, had to spend days, weeks, months gazing in bewilderment, pain and puzzlement at the excrement that was hanging all around us.

Sometimes I used to imagine that the designer himself had had an accident. His body had been churned up and mingled into the design. Those little daubs of red could have been his liver or his heart. The grey bits could have been his intestines. Yes, yes. Then the yellow bits could have been his skin, the blue bits his eyes. Now why hadn’t the BBC been alerted to include hospitals in their myriad makeover programmes? Instead of transforming the homes of people who were healthy but too cretinous on the creative front to do it themselves the tv channels should be doing their miraculous makeovers in casualties and hospitals up and down the British Isles. I thought it was a great TV programme idea. Instead of contemplating the curtains I’d use my time in hospital formulating and typing up this brilliant idea. It wouldn’t outdo the camel racing for excitement but it would keep the brain cells toned.

Mark my writer neighbour very kindly delivered my laptop to my bed. I’m a very fast typist - 30 years pounding the keys will do that for most people. That same day I discovered that my left hand would only flop on the keyboard instead of dancing over it the way it used to. It was my first truly sad day. After that I could only focus on my duff left hand and lost all interest in the pukey curtains.

10. A LITTLE CRY

2010-07-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

The patients on the neuro ward looked appallingly ill. One woman had tubes coming in and going out of every orifice in her body and a panel of lights at the end of her bed which intrigued and terrified me. But I was too afraid to ask the nurses what they meant. She also had several drips dangling from stands which were alarmed and rang frequently and ominously when the liquids ran low. The woman in the bed next to her had all the visible signs of a stroke - eye, cheek, mouth had dropped several inches down one side of her face.

The woman on my right had lost her mobility and half her hearing due to meningitis weeks earlier. Her husband came every day. In the morning he wheeled her to the cafeteria where he bought her ‘the kind of breakfast she deserved’. Then he took her for strolls around the hospital in her wheelchair. In the afternoon her adult children brought her home cooked food which they all ate together at her bedside. When the ‘kids’ left her husband helped her to the bath. After the bath he lovingly rubbed cream into her skin. I know all this because hospital curtains have gaps, no matter how tightly you draw them. Every evening before he left, he asked her the same question:

‘Are you alright now, love?’

Every evening her answer was always the same.

‘I’m fine love’.

Then he’d kiss her goodnight and leave. But one night when he asked her the usual question:

‘Are you alright now love?’

‘The nights are the worst. Sometimes I have a little cry and then I feel better,’ she answered with a heart rending sob.

I expected him to say the usual upbeat white lies people trot out on such occasions. Things like: ‘Oh, you’ll be alright, love. I’m here. The doctors are doing a great job. You’ll be up in no time.’ There was none of that. His answer was extremely simple.

‘I have a little cry myself every night too, love’.

Then he kissed her and said ‘goodnight’ and was back at her bedside chirpy and cheerful as usual the following morning.

An Asian woman at the other end of the ward also had a constant companion. Her husband arrived every day at 11 o’clock on the dot, bringing her newspapers, magazines and glorious food whose aromatic scents wafted around the ward and triggered my drool reflex. They chatted for a while, then he settled in and read all the newspapers while she napped. Now and then he’d read out bits for her if she was awake and they’d laugh together. Her handsome sons arrived some time in the afternoon and cheered her up. You could see this by the way her eyes glowed. They all left at ‘ward closing time’.

Being used to the happy, independent, single life I thought I’d choke if I had a man sitting by my bed all day long, smothering me, making sure I was okay. But I didn’t have that ‘problem’. There was no man in my life gasping to bring me delicious food, settle down by the side of the bed, tell me what was in the newspapers, bathe me, rub cream into me, kiss me goodnight. I didn’t have to worry about being choked or smothered.

But the ‘man’ would have been a help especially at bath time. The nurses weren’t keen on me having a bath on my own. We came to a compromise. During the few minutes I was disconnected from the Heparin drip while they changed the cartridge I told them I’d zip into the already drawn bath and be back out before they knew it. Little did I dream then that I wouldn’t be ‘zipping’ anywhere for the next year. Like the nurses I didn’t want to be separated for any lengthy period from my Heparin drip which was diluting my blood and preventing any other clots which could kill me. But I’d been in bed for 6 days lying on pillows with a plastic lining underneath the covers for obvious hygienic reasons. HRT was off the menu and sweats had flooded back in abundance. Given a choice between a month frolicking in the jungle with Indiana and that bath - no contest. Sorry Indie!

9. BLOOD, PLEASE

2010-07-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

There are thousands of pleasurable ways of waking up to a Monday morning. Cavorting in the jungle with Indiano Jones – him Tarzan, me Jane, - come to mind. However, my special treat that Monday morning in Charing Cross Hospital was the phlebotomist standing by my bedside saying, “Blood please” … and I hadn’t even had my banana. Donate blood before breakfast? Why? Because they needed my blood sample to test my INR, which is the international ratio for blood clotting. Once my blood had been diluted to a safe, satisfactory clotting level, I’d be discharged. Discharged? Take as many pints as you want, Mr. Wonderful Phlebotomist.
      There was a friendly warm buzz in the ward that morning. Breakfast was served. I inadvertently spilled my muesli AND my coffee all over the tray. My left hand was acting weird and felt numb. I limped like a lopsided ship to the loo hauling my Heparin stand with me. This blood diluting lark was making me all wobbly and strangely happy. Watching the action on the ward was somehow more exciting than morning tv news. It was all go go go. Staff hauling breakfast trolleys, cleaners bustling away, bevies of nurses checking obs and another contingent asking the inmates to please take their places in the chairs by their beds while they changed the linen. Clusters of doctors and trainees doctors were up next. It was like an episode out of ER without the gory bits. ‘Marianne’ and ‘Jill’ obviously knew these doctors very well. During the examination behind the closed curtains a muted murmur of chat and laughter drifted over to me. Pity I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
      Mainly because of my interest in matters medical. As a student I wanted to specialize in medical translation. I had no problem learning the foreign languages.   The trick was to study hard and date a slew of native speakers who were NOT interested in improving THEIR English. But I had great difficulty grasping how the blood circulated through the body or why capillaries were like changing rooms where bad blood was cleaned so to speak. I’ll give the big brother doctor his due. Once, when our visits home coincided he did his utmost best to clarify the vein/artery/capillary/valves/septum landscape to me. He showed me textbook illustrations which looked more sophisticated but just as baffling as those drawn by the nuns on the blackboard. I tried. He tried. It was almost making sense. The heart was just like a pump that made the blood circulate around the body.
      ‘But when it reaches your big toe, how can the blood get back up again?’ I asked the brother.
      This was the cretinous question that ended my free private medical lectures.
      Now the doctors in Charing Cross were giving me medical knowledge I didn’t really want to hear. They were different from those treating ‘Marianne’ and ‘Jill’. Mine were from the neurology dept. Dr. W. introduced himself and his trainee neurologists. Charing Cross was a ‘teaching hospital’ as well? Great! Always willing to learn! In essence I learnt that the Heparin was working very well and I was responding beautifully. That was the good news. The bad news was they were keeping me in for a week, maybe longer. As soon as a bed became available I’d be moved to the neuro ward.
      I was absolutely stunned and tried ‘reasoning’ with the neurologists. It couldn’t be that bad surely? I was feeling much better. The clot hadn’t killed me. Okay, maybe mini bits of it had floated off into my brain and affected arm, leg and balance on my left side. But my blood was being diluted and everything would be hunky dorey in no time? But another week, seven more days and nights in hospital? Didn’t they realise for me this meant arrividerci and adieu to my wonderful assignment in Dubai filming camel racing? I hadn’t worked in British television for 10 years not to know that filming dates are sacrosanct and delays and changes cause huge expense. And so it was.
      I got a week’s pay from Wall to Wall TV. They were ‘sorry to lose me’ and even sorrier they couldn’t find the very expensive specs I’d left on the desk I’d occupied for two days. I was inconsolable at the loss of the camel racing assignment. Not because I’m big into camels, or racing, or animal surrogacy, but it was such a different assignment!   Instead of filming baby camels in their special animal maternity hospitals, I’m moved upstairs to the Neuro ward.
      ‘Marianne’, ‘Jill’ and all the other new people on the ward said farewell. I thought after a few days on the neuro ward I’d be dancing down to visit the poor creatures who still had to stay in for several more weeks. How wrong can a woman in denial be?

8. LOVE ... AND THAT FUN, FUN WILL

2010-07-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

I also had my 2 Cupid brooches, given to me by the ever optimistic and thoughtful Deborah from Toronto. The first Cupid brooch was gold, but the bow snapped off the minute I put it on. Symbolic of looking for True Love after 35? Even Cupid can’t hack it.   Undaunted Deborah gave me a silver Cupid with very large Art Deco wings. Within a week the first wing snapped off. Don’t ask me how! I treated this treasure with supreme care! When I wore the one winged brooch people always asked:
      ‘Is that a one winged cherub?’
      ‘No. It’s Cupid, and I’m supposed to meet the man of my life when I wear this’.
      Fat chance!   The other wing plus the catch snapped off. I’d been meaning to get both Cupids mended. But I’d do that once I got out of hospital. Because wasn’t this vertebral dissection and blood diluting lark just an interesting hiccup in my life?
      I lay in that hospital bed thinking of all the other things I had and could leave in my Fun Will - my unsold scripts, sit-coms, novels, the rights to my first ‘award winning’ published novel 'Nellie'. I had my elegant evening bag, only worn on the most exquisite of occasions - the opera in Seville (alone at Don Carlos); nephew Jon’s graduation in Galway. In this expensive piece of elegance I also keep Mammy’s little pearl earrings which she wore all her life and was so proud of. My mother was a woman of style and she would have loved those elegant, joyous events. Even though she’s long dead, I often think that just by keeping her earrings there, she can somehow participate in such happy occasions.
      Thanks to Maeve I was at least mentally getting on with making THE FUN WILL. But Charing Cross Hospital was not the right location and deep down I really wasn’t having fun deluding myself. Jewellery, posters, worldly possessions were just distractions from the awful realisation that my brain had been adversely affected. Growing up in Ireland the nuns incessantly banged on about our brains. ‘Downey, where’s your brain?’ ‘Downey, do you have a brain in that head?’ ‘Why don’t you use your brain?’ was another oft repeated plea by the parents.   Then, of course, the clincher: ‘She has her father’s brains.’ Oh yeah? If I had his brains where were mine then?
      I liked my brain even if it was useless in that zone that dealt with figures, finance, and the Gross National Product. Now it was damaged goods. Bits of it had been defaced the way a beautiful painting can be wrecked by a vicious splash of acid. Paul Auster’s book, ‘The New York Trilogy’ describes an event in a fictional laboratory where the brains/total knowledge of a genius were being preserved in an experiment. But they dropped the brain on the lab floor and all that knowledge was splashed to wet kitty pooh.
      Death, to me, brought to mind the dreadful waste of brains that had stored up so much knowledge for decades. Why hadn’t those clever scientists devoted more time and brain power to grafting knowledge from brains onto other brains instead of perfecting face-lifts and liposuction? Why did zillions of wonderfully toned brains go to grey goo in graves all over the globe? Would Maeve have approved of all this morbid negativity? Don’t think so. But I had exhausted all the fun possibilities from making my mental Fun Will.
      Instead I focused on sunshine in Dubai and wangling time off work there and the courage to do a spot of camel riding. No need for any kind of Will because on Monday things would revert back to normal. Dream on, Downey!

7. MAKING THAT FUN, FUN WILL

2010-07-11T13:34:00.000-07:00

The nurses saved the Wild One’s life. She’d been choking on a bit of chicken. The rest of us were guilt-ridden. We had ignored her desperate honking thinking she was merely clearing the phlegm. We introduced ourselves and agreed that somebody has to almost choke to death before we got personal and told each other about ourselves. ‘Jill’ the elderly lady in the bed opposite me had already spent 10 days in a dreadful hospital before she was lucky enough to make it to Charing Cross. After being discharged from the ‘dreadful hospital’ she collapsed on her kitchen floor. Her son managed to get her a life saving ambulance. It was the ambulance driver who decided to take her to Charing Cross because, ‘It’s much MUCH nicer. I wouldn’t want my Mum to end up in that other dreadful hospital X’.

‘Marianne’ in the corner bed, was in for pain management which explained the large puzzling apparatus she had over her body which stopped the bedclothes exacerbating her pain. All her nerves had been affected. She’d been in relentless pain for four months but the doctors still hadn’t found the cause. Marianne lent me her copy of Maeve Binchy’s book on hospital etiquette which she wrote after a hip replacement. It was a hilarious ‘read’.

One of the chapters in Maeve’s book dealt with making a Will. I’d been meaning to write a Will for the past 10 – 20 years, the way I’d been meaning to sort my laundry on a Monday night, fold it and iron it. I’d also been meaning to buy an ironing board. Besides, if I made a Will what did I actually have to leave? My entire assets were a computer and a printer and enough in the Abbey National to cover my burial. My ‘savings’ would go to the taxman. So why bother with a Will?

The previous 2 years I’d been travelling for the BBC on a weekly basis. Just before I’d take off for the airport I’d always think about The Will. In the eventuality of my death how would people know I had enough in the Abbey National to cover my burial, even if the amount wouldn’t stretch to champagne on tap at the festivities afterwards? However, Maeve’s book reassured me. The WORST time to think about making a Will was on the way to the airport. She also emphasised making a will should be FUN! As a youngster she’d been given £100 from her father and had spent wonderful weeks wondering who the many grateful recipients of the £100 should be. People forgot they had some things which true friends would appreciate. I decided to give the Fun Will a whirl.

I remembered my original Polish Solidarnosc poster. An American friend would sacrifice his kneecaps for that poster. Jerzy, the Polish artist had painted it in my office the previous year when we were working on ‘Freedom’s Battle’. One of the most elevating mornings of my life was when I came into my office and found the floor and desks strewn with original Solidarnosc posters to be shared out among our team. I also had photographs of Jerzy and myself. In 100 years time that would make a very interesting historical titbit for my great-great-grand-nieces/nephews.

What other original stuff had I forgotten about which true friends would appreciate? My genuine Berlin Wall bits? When the Wall came down I was working on a documentary in Berlin. The entire world was at the Wall with jackhammers chiselling out colourful bits of cement. The Germans had to invent a new word for this new activity – Mauerspecht – a wallpecker. My Berlin Wall bits are authentic because I chiselled them out myself. Not having a jackhammer in my luggage I could only hack off tiny bits. But they’re real as opposed to what they put on some Berlin postcards. Today bits of the Berlin Wall are like relics of the True Cross. As they used to say in Ireland: ‘If you glued all the True Cross bits back together, you’d have a forest bigger than Italy and France combined.’ Originally in ’89 I brought my authentic Wall shards back for two of my colleagues. The lads had asked me to. But then they howled with laughter at the mini size of my gift. I was never so insulted! I’d said goodbye to most of my nails during my Wall chiselling endeavours. What were they expecting? A slab half the size of a house like Ronald Reagan got? I snapped back my colourful bits of Wall and told them if they wanted bigger chunks they could bloody well go to Berlin and chisel them out themselves. Who should I leave those to in my Fun Will?

6. A VERTEBRAL WHAT ....?

2010-07-09T11:27:00.000-07:00

Dinner that evening was some undecipherable mess a previous patient had ordered the day before. If Oliver Twist had been served up this ghastly goo he’d never have uttered the immortal words: “Please, Sir can I have more.” Again the Wild W in the alcove ruined any rudiment of enjoyment with her gargling phlegm aria.

By 10.00 all was quiet on the ward. The Wild W had fallen into a non-honking sleep. I was dozing when a strange apparition of a man in a tweed jacket and an Aran jumper materialised at the end of the bed. I thought he was some kind of fisherman. But he was the off duty neurologist Dr. H. who’d been asked to look at my scan. He introduced himself and his colleague Dr R. They both looked terribly serious and I jokingly said that if I had anything like a stroke could they please give me the name of some other impairment with similar symptoms. ‘I wanted to go back to work as quickly as possible and if the word ‘stroke’ got around the small world of tv I’d never work again’. I also wanted to know how fast I could get back to the gym. Both doctors smiled, asked me what I did. I told them about my golden opportunity of filming camel racing and thoroughbred camel surrogacy in Dubai.

Dr. H. then explained what he’d seen on the scan. I had a ‘vertebral dissection’ which was a torn artery. I had two arteries in the back of my neck called vertebral and two arteries in front - the carotids. Somehow or other I had torn one of the vertebral arteries in the back of my neck. Blood had seeped through the tear and had formed a clot. The next step for a clot was to break free and work its way to the brain. Dr. H. had ordered a Heparin drip to dilute my blood clot. He said that there were two possible scenarios – good and bad. The good scenario was that the Heparin would dilute the clot. Bits of it might make it to my brain. But the damage would be minimal. The bad scenario was that the clot would not dilute, move up into my brain as a whole and cause major damage. I’m paraphrasing. Dr. H. put this beautifully in cogent English.

I was attached to the Heparin drip immediately. They said good night and I told them I’d focus on the good scenario. I went to sleep, trying not to think of anything, particularly not bits of a blood clot floating up to my brain. I dreamt of a giant fisherman who looked like the Colossus of Rhodes. This statue was protecting me in a giant bowl where normally you would have large flames. The face was that of the neurologist.

The fact that I woke up the next morning feeling fine, alert, ready for my banana meant that the good scenario had prevailed. With any luck I surmised, I’d be out of Charing Cross in a day or two, back to work and off to have a closer look at baby camels. No need for introductions to the other women on the ward.

That morning we had a new addition. A chain smoker with asthma and chronic flu, who arrived onto the ward with her husband and daughter. The eyeballs of all three of them nearly plopped down onto the floor when the Wild Woman made her Grande Entrance, oceans of red hair flying, teeth dancing, phlegm sounding like some volcano about to erupt, dragging her canister of oxygen behind her. All that morning in between honking up phlegm she spent hours on the ‘phone giving spiritual advice to a friend she was trying to recruit to the church that she herself wanted to set up. Without the phlegm aria it would have made interesting listening. But I’ll be honest, I’ve had much more enjoyable Sunday mornings. I was gasping for Monday when the world would resume its normal trot. I’d probably be discharged. Phlegm city would be a vague memory.

If it hadn’t been for the Wild W, I would probably never have spoken to my other fellow inmates on that ward. During Sunday lunch - another tray of mushy roadkill - she gave us a virtuoso rendition of a yellow phlegm aria. The elderly woman opposite me, who’d probably witnessed gruesome things in World War II, threw her eyes up to heaven, mentally signalling from her bed that it was intolerable to have to put up with this kind of aural torture. Then the phlegm changed into a croak of “Nurse, nurse, nurse”. All of us reached for the emergency button. This time the Wild W wasn’t just indulging in her phlegm clearing activities. She was choking. Man, those nurses flitted faster than hungry ducks across a pond.

5. GETTING TO KNOW MORE ...

2010-07-08T12:04:00.000-07:00

During the morning none of the nurses came and stood in the middle of the ward and made introductions so I smiled weakly at the occupants in the other beds. It was a very tranquil place to spend the morning, with the exception of the Wild Woman who paced up and down, honking and giving us a virtuoso rendition of phlegm yodelling as she trailed her oxygen tank behind her. Why did she bother to haul it everywhere? She never put on the healing face mask even though the nurses pleaded with her to do so.

Reality got progressively worse. The afternoon’s excitement was being wheeled along eerily quiet hospital hallways to the MRI station for a scan to see what was happening inside my skull. I had no idea what a brain scan would entail until I saw the tomblike apparatus. That nearly polished me off entirely. The week before I’d seen a horrible episode on a TV hospital drama where a claustrophobic patient had tried to claw his way out of the coffin sized scanner and suffered a heart attack as a result. I whispered ‘claustrophobia’ to the nurse who pressed a panic balloon into my hand. She advised me to close my eyes and think of going somewhere nice, exotic and hot. Oh yeah! Well, I would have been going to a nice exotic, hot camel zone if this hadn’t happened to me, whatever THIS was.

Because of THIS I had to spend 20 minutes being scanned in the steel tomb. I’m terrified of small places. Being enclosed in there for 20 minutes clenching my eyes shut I remembered all the stories I’d ever read about people being trapped in earthquakes like the brave mother who chewed her own thumb for a week and fed her baby on blood. But all those visions of bravery just made me feel such a dismal coward. I tried to sing but couldn’t remember the words to a single song. My heart should have exploded with terror but I survived the dreadful tunnel with enough energy to tell the attendant they should provide eye covers like you get on planes. That way the faint of heart like myself wouldn’t be tempted to open one’s eyes and claw one’s way out. The nurse immediately ran to the drawer and produced one such item. Great help now that it was all over! Except it wasn’t. I had to go back inside for another 10 minutes. Second time round I also got music to soothe me - Abba belting out: ‘We’re having the time of our life.’ Oh yeah? I can think of 50,000 other ways of having the time of my life on a Saturday afternoon, thank you.

Back on the ward I’m just in time for afternoon tea.

Traditional English afternoon tea is a true culinary pleasure: warm home made scones, clotted cream, genuine strawberry jam and beautiful tea served in bone china. Afternoon tea on that hospital ward was lukewarm, stronger than bog water, served in plastic containers accompanied by the Wild Woman’s crescendo of prodigious phlegm and vomity honking from the alcove. The rest of us on the ward looked at one another in disgust and smiled tolerantly even though we hadn’t been formally introduced. We were still getting to know one another.

4. GETTING TO KNOW THE OTHER INMATES

2010-07-07T10:35:00.000-07:00

‘Getting To Know You’ is the jolly song sweetly crooned by Deborah Kerr in the musical ‘The King and I’. This song in a way epitomises how the English are perceived by the world. They need time to get to know people. ‘When I am with you, getting to know what to say.’ The Irish on the other hand are not supposed to have that problem and can open people up like stubborn oysters. Therefore, I was letting the Irish side down badly when I couldn’t immediately get all the inmates chatting and dancing the jig the minute I was wheeled onto the ward.

I’m not usually lost for a paragraph or two when I meet strangers. This gift I acquired through 10 years of hard slog in British television, working my way up from temp/ researcher/assistant producer to achieve the dizzy heights as associate producer on BBC Correspondent. This journey upwards entailed years of ‘phone bashing’ which is TV slang for ‘verbal investigative journalism’. One of my first jobs in London was to do a bit of ‘phone bashing in German, French and Italian!’. I was new to London and honestly thought they were referring to some pan-European communication destruction system. In 1989 there was a trend to mutilate simple words like 'dustman’ into ‘waste management technician operator’.

After 10 years of honing the art of ‘phone bashing’ I had metamorphosed into a ‘natural communicator’. This was due solely to my Irish blood and not to the endless hours on the ‘phone every day speaking to complete strangers, requesting them to please participate in our programmes. Down the years some of these included dodgy dentists in Italy (who practised oral surgery but bought diplomas from a non existent university); right wing duellists in Vienna; Stasi spies; French chefs; Czech artists. Much more refined verbal skills were needed for the History of the Devil. Not because they were aiming for an interview with the devil himself - although as a researcher I was never surprised at the demands of some directors. The History of the Devil was tricky because we were filming in France in August when the whole country closes down for a holiday month. Other ‘phone bashing routines involved trying to nail down famously busy politicians like Gorbachev, et al whose press assistants know only one word - ‘No, Non, Nein, Niet’.

I always opened my conversation by saying, “My name is Downey, Brigitte Downey, how are you today?” However, being wheeled into a ward in Charing Cross with 5 women and 2 empty beds it didn’t seem the appropriate etiquette to holler my name from the trolley to the sleeping patients. My niece Bairbre used to mimic my opening gambit: “My name is Downey, Brigitte Downey, and I want my Martini stirred and filled to the brim in a pint glass, thank you”. It always made me smile.

But I was far from smiling that evening in Charing Cross. I had to save all my energy just to get from the trolley into the bed. Despite reports in the papers that there wasn’t a bed to be had for love or money all over London, I had a choice of 2. One near the alcove and one at the corridor. I chose the one near the corridor. If I was going to kick the bucket in the middle of the night I’d be within screaming distance of the night staff. I could glimpse the nurses’ station just across the corridor through the gap in the same ghastly curtains as they had in Casualty.

It wasn’t a very peaceful first night. The night nurses woke me up every hour to check my ‘obs’. Just when I had dropped off they were back shining torches in my eyes, checking my blood pressure, testing my reflexes and making me run my heel up and down one leg and then up and down the other leg.

When I opened my eyes the next morning I was so exhausted from these myriad visits I was still in a semi dream state. Which would explain the apparition at the foot of my bed – the Wild Woman with an ocean of red hair down to her waist. She paced to and fro, hauling an oxygen tank behind her, wheezing and honking up prodigious amounts of phlegm. Her false teeth tangoed in and out of her mouth. Was I at a performance of Macbeth? Alas no. This was my new reality zone.

3. NAME AND D.O.B.

2010-07-06T13:38:00.000-07:00

Did I know what my name was? Could I please divulge it to the nurses.

If I’d been my normal self I’d have joked and told them that when I arrived in London in 1989 from Manhattan another desperate writer tried to convince me to change my name. He told me that being Irish, with a name like Brigitte having lived in Paris for years, I should change my name to Beckett. That kind of name would open a lot of doors in London, he said. Why not? Who’d want proof? Had anyone besides the passport office ever asked to see my birth cert.?

‘My name is Downey, Brigitte Downey.’

‘Date of birth?’

That’s always the killer. Working in British TV (mainly for my language skills) I was reminded every day that I was way beyond my sellby date. When I first hit London and went for job interviews I was stunned when the first thing they wanted to know was my age – and never how come I was fluent in three European languages. In the beginning I used to inform them that in all the years I’d worked in NY nobody had ever asked my age because in the US it was against the law to ask for age, sex or gender on a job application. But this being Casualty, I gave all the correct and honest answers. Everyone seemed very pleased. But they still checked the name and date around my wrist.

For the next 5 hours posses of doctors, trainee doctors, nurses, trainee nurses, traipsed in and out of the little cubicle. They spent ages testing the reflexes in my hands. They asked me to move the heel of one leg up and then down the other leg. I had to get off the trolley to see how well I could walk. They shone various torches in my eyes and asked me to focus on a spot on the curtains. This was the most trying aspect of the examinations. Those Charing Cross curtains were a nightmare mess both in design and colour.

At nine o’clock one of the doctors comes in and announces I’ll have to stay in overnight, maybe the week end. I remember the heater on high back at the flat. I also remember that I was supposed to meet Linda S. at 6 o’clock. A very kind male nurse helps me totter to the phone. Linda is obsessively punctual.

‘Do you know how late it is? Where are you?’

‘Charing Cross Casualty.’

‘You’re joking’.

I explain about the heater in the flat being on high. To avoid burning down the house could she please go to my place and turn the heater off?

Linda S. snaps into action, calls Big David. The two of them rush over to the hospital, pick up my keys and zoom back to my flat. They turn off the heater, pack my necessities: my own nightwear, HRT, (so I won’t miss a dose and age 25 years overnight) my almond oil for my dry skin. My life’s essentials! By the time they bring me these I’m installed upstairs in a small (7 beds) general ward. Everyone else on the ward is sleeping.

We chat in low voices, then say goodnight. They walk away and leave me on this dreary ward feeling oddly alone and for the first time ….. afraid and frightened.

2. OF COURSE I KNOW WHAT DAY IT IS

2010-07-05T12:01:00.000-07:00

The cab can’t drop me off in front of casualty. Roadworks! So I stagger, bouncing off the cars in the parking lot, towards the casualty entrance. I heave myself through the hospital doors like some lost soul who’s been meandering through Limbo and Purgatory and has finally made it to the Pearly Gates. I’m wheezing worse than a kennel full of asthmatic cats.

With great difficulty I give my name to the receptionist, who isn’t the least bit impressed by the wheezing crock about to collapse in front of her. Lord only knows what bleeding messes she’s witnessed so far today.

‘You’d better sit in the wheelchair,’ she says briskly.

I sit in the wheelchair. A bustling nurse materialises out of nowhere and plops a grey cardboard receptacle into my hands. It’s a disposable vomit bucket. It could easily double as a Charlie Chaplin hat at an economy fancy dress. I am fascinated by this throw-away invention, wondering what other uses it could be put to. I want to discuss this with the nurse but don’t have the energy to speak. The horrible vision of Mammy losing her speech comes to mind. To block out that memory I focus on the wheelchair. The only other time I sat in a wheelchair was decades earlier when I had my appendix out in Vienna. I was a student at the time.

My hospital bed was on a huge public female ward with some 30 other patients. This ward had rows of large windows with a lovely view of the park and the trees outside. The only disadvantage to the park’s proximity were the birds flitting in and out, visiting the hospital beds. Just before I had my operation a bird perched itself at the end of my bed and stared at me. Now, there’s an Irish superstition which my mother was very fond of: if a bird flies into the room somebody is going to die. If that were really the case all 31 of us on the ward were gonners.

I had already been prepped with a potent drug when this particular bird singled out my bed for a spot of singing so I was very calm and accepting of my imminent death. As they wheeled me downstairs for my operation I even burst into song. This changed to a screeching halt when the man in the green mask approached me brandishing a knife. I screamed at him that I wasn’t totally zonked out and that they couldn’t operate. He only wanted to shave me. The fascinating fact that you had to be shaved before you had your appendix out made me forget all about the bird of death. To this day I think that’s the only reason I somehow survived that operation

Back then in Vienna I was the youngest on the ward. When my friends visited me (mainly to check out the dating potential in the young doctors) they made such a racket we were officially relegated to the corridors so as not to disturb the other patients. The nurses deposited me into a wheelchair and advised to take my rowdy pals with me. Dynamite Deborah from Toronto decided the endless hallways were the ideal place to test the speed of the wheelchair. She propelled me up and down those hallways like a speeding bullet, just for the heck of it. The corridors echoed to our young, raucous laughter and my screams about bursting my stitches.

I hadn’t thought about that hospital in Vienna for 30 years. Suddenly looking down at the wheelchair in Charing Cross the memory of that long sad ward with a human tragedy in every bed flooded back. During the night some patients, beds and all, were stealthily removed never to be seen again. The woman in the bed next to me was always bawling her eyes out. When I finally plucked up the courage to ask her what she had she told me she’d only gone to the doctor for a consultation. When she woke up they’d taken off both her breasts. After that I didn’t ask anybody what was wrong with them. To my callous young eyes they all looked like ancient crocks on their last legs.

‘Chest pains?’ the Charing Cross nurse wanted to know.

‘Well, my right arm was numb...’

She didn’t give me a chance to finish the sentence but bustled me through to a curtained-off area in Casualty. A drip was put into my arm and from then on it was a series of questions. Did I know what day it was? Of course I did. If it hadn’t been a Friday I wouldn’t have gone to the doctor for a sick cert. Next question!

1. IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT

2010-07-04T08:18:00.000-07:00

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: ‘In a real dark night of the soul it’s always 3 o’clock in the morning’. I adored that lyrical sentence until I woke up at 3 o’clock in the morning of a bitter London January feeling worse than a dog’s dinner that’s been in and out of the hound several times over. The first thing to pop into my non lyrical mind was the opening line to ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ – f**k, f**k, f**k followed by my own symphony in S***.

My diagnosis was killer London flu plus world class food poisoning. But the right side of my face and body was also numb and that truly scared me. The word ‘stroke’ briefly flitted through my mind.

‘Dear, sweet, Jesus, NO.’

I was too old to feature in those ads where a girl sprays herself with espoir deodorant and men then leap through triple glazing to get closer to the no longer whiffy one. But I was the same age as Goldie Hawn.

‘Dear, sweet, Jesus, NO.’

When I said it again I smiled remembering my mother. Mammy never uttered an ‘ugly swear’ word. ‘Dear sweet Jesus, NO’ was the phrase she used and only in the most trying of circumstances. Like the time my sister Mary and I cut off all of baby sister Patricia’s golden curls. Or when we introduced little sis to the thrills of sticking hairpins in plugs which could have electrocuted her.

‘Dear sweet Jesus NO!’ was probably what Mammy would have said when she had her massive stroke. But when this happened she lost her speech.

Touching my own numb face in that dark bedroom I had a sudden vivid recollection of that time 30 years earlier. Fresh from the University of Vienna, I was gracing the folks back home in the emerald fields with my exciting presence. But Mammy, instead of leaping around the kitchen making her spectacular blackberry tarts and apple jelly lay in bed like a sculpted figure in a crypt, her speech gone, her laughter mute, waiting for a hospital bed in Dublin.

Terror stricken by that dreadful memory I let out a few notes, a bit of a scale. It wasn’t a stroke. My voice was still there. And was it any wonder I was numb? It was a bitter London January. The bedroom was nicely chilled. But I was so terrified I wanted to go downstairs and knock on my neighbour Mark’s door. Over the years, Mark the writer and I met on the stairs and moaned about all the lowlife who rejected our written pearls. The thought of me knocking on Mark’s door in my frumpy January thermals brought me to my senses! The poor guy would never recover if I knocked on his door at 3 o’clock in the morning in my godawful nightwear. I put the alarm back from 6 to 8. I’d have to postpone meeting romance and destiny man in the gym.

A few hours later I wake up and realise that I won’t be able to make it into work. Well ‘great, marvellous’! Day 3 into my fantastic world wide TV assignment I get sick. Plus it’s a Friday and they’ll think I’m pulling a sickie. ‘They’ being Wall to Wall TV – a company I’d never worked for before. If I’d still been with the BBC, my old employer, I could have stayed in bed with my hot lemons. They knew I loved my work. But on Monday morning the new company might want a sick cert. That was the only reason I called my GP. But she wasn’t in. I’d have to wait for ‘open surgery’ that afternoon. ‘Open surgery’ in England doesn’t mean your entrails are hanging out of you. It’s a different kind of torture. Depending on the number of people in the waiting room I could be stuck there for several hours waiting for that sick cert.

I call my friendly cab company, Christies. They know me and my capricious bell. Sometimes it sticks and sometimes it doesn’t ring at all. I ask them to pick me up, wait for me at the surgery and bring me back. I put the heater on high so the place will be toastie warm when I get back. I’m stunned how hard it is for me to get down the one flight of stairs. I have to imitate the way a child slides on her bum from one step to the other. I can barely get into the cab.

At the surgery, I can’t negotiate the short distance from the cab to the building in a straight line. I’m like a bad drunk clinging onto walls hoping to God none of my former BBC colleagues will spot me. This doctor’s surgery is a quick walk from the BBC TV Centre. Staggering on a Friday afternoon! What’s the first thing that pops to mind? Liquid lunch.

Luckily Dr M. on his way into surgery spots me clawing the walls and asks to see me immediately even though the waiting room is chocker block. I stagger into his room. He shines a torch in my eyes, asks me to put my hands out, and makes me walk up and down. I’m miffed Dr M. doesn’t corroborate my own diagnosis of killer London flu, plus salmonella food poisoning. I’m flabbergasted he’s calling Charing Cross Hospital to advise them I’m on my way – NOW. He kindly asks if I have anyone to take me there. I sharply reply that I’m used to taking myself everywhere, thank you, and the cab is still waiting outside. What I really want to say to the doctor is: ‘This is an appalling mistake. I can’t be on my way to casualty. I’m about to do a TV programme about camel racing and camel surrogacy in Dubai.’

It’s the 21st day of the New Millennium. So far it’s been MY year. I want it to stay that way. Only 7 days earlier I had been granted a ‘chat’ (think private Papal audience) with a drama executive at Wall to Wall TV. They had read and liked my scripts but couldn’t promise anything. The drama executive also agreed that of course if I were married to Hugh Grant I’d have a much better chance of getting my films, drama series and sitcoms commissioned.

On my way out of the building by chance I run into Louise, a documentary producer, who hired me two years previously to work on a memorable programme about stigmatas in Italy. Over coffee we remember Signor G who told me he received his stigmatas in a space-ship over Uruguay. In the course of our stroll down Memory Lane, Louise asks if I have a copy of my CV on me. Of course I do. As a freelancer the first precept is ‘never leave home without your CV’. Always be prepared in case somebody jumps off a runaway bus and wants to offer you a job. But it actually happens. The documentary department is looking for an Asst Producer with my background (years of experience in British TV documentaries plus fluent German, French and Italian) for a series going out on ARTE, the French/German TV Arts Channel. They interview me and I get the job.

I’ll have to go to Dubai to film an unusual story about camel racing, camel breeding and camel surrogacy. Then it’s off to Namibia investigating the flora and fauna for another story. I was ecstatic. For the first time in my life I had ‘walked into a job’, as the Irish put it. My ship had finally come in. For a change I wasn’t waiting for it on platform 7 in Paddington. I wasn’t working as a scriptwriter but the drama lot were just upstairs.

My life was finally on schedule. I even had my taxes filed long before the deadline. What else was left apart from love and romance? Being on the wrong side of 50, I knew I had a better chance of getting laid on Planet Jupiter than finding true love on Earth with a personable man my age who still had a few teeth and a bit of hair left, a great sense of humour and no problems, thank you. Call me different but I was convinced I’d beat those odds. The body was willing and fit. Why shouldn’t it be? Years of Pilates, Yoga, ‘Body Sculpt’, ‘Body Pump’ and TBT (tums, bums and thighs for the uninitiated), or if you're French FAC – (fessiers, abdomen, cuisses). I and my rock hard legs were ready for Cupid’s arrow.

This was MY year. No way in hell should I be staggering into Charing Cross Hospital.

LONDON SAVES ME

2010-07-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

It’s Jan 2000. I’m due in Dubai to do a TV programme on camel racing. I’m healthy, happily single but Chardonnay chilling in case Cupid ever finds my address again. Then I have the stroke!

My GP and the medical staff at Charing Cross Hospital save my life. Everything else goes down the spout: TV career, health, singing voice, GSOH, one hand, half my hair. It’s doctor’s orders to knock back a daily dose of rat poison (Warfarin) yet half a glass of Beaujolais might make my eyeballs bleed! I can’t get out of bed but the landlady wants to evict me. No way can I make it down the aisle in the Bahamas in July – bridesmaid to my younger sister who lives there.

My life was over at 54? No way, Jose!

Working on planet TV the motto was: ‘IF THERE’S A PROBLEM – JUST SOLVE IT!’ In normal parlance this means if Mary won’t do the interview, then hassle Joseph, Gabriel or one of the goats who witnessed the Birth to go on camera.

So what was the solution to my horrible post stroke problems? Answer: LONDON! 4 stops on the tube to the V & A for a pot of tea in the Poynter Room: chats with the swans in Kew Gardens: free concerts in Wren Churches; Shakespeare in The Globe. Those London days helped as much towards my recovery as the medically prescribed rat poison.

Six months later, thanks to family, friends and the Charing Cross physios, I made it down the aisle in Nassau (always the bridesmaid!). The landlady got the notice wrong four times in a row so I was stuck in housing hell for a year. The Social Services saved my bed. I never worked in TV again (not from lack of trying!) … and Stupid Cupid still can’t find my address! But I got my health, happiness, hand, energy, GSOH and singing voice all back again.

CHEERS LONDON! THANK YOU!