And so he blogs daily

Without much conniption

It can be so easy to rest on one’s laurels, then, maybe having a rest to reassess what new laurels to pursue is a good thing too. However, it was gratifying this weekend to read an interaction with a published author and a great social media following that my blogging had inspired him to blog daily.

What a lament that caused me, even as I appreciated that the little I do inspires others. Writing daily can be a goal, and it is not the absence of things to write about that is the problem. When it comes to blogs, there is enough muscle memory to start and go without the encumbrance of writer’s block; the problem is more one of lethargy.

Creativity is sacrosanct

Beyond lethargy, you wonder if it is worthwhile just banging out anything. The advent of Generative AI provides such an opportunity to manufacture offal without attendant rumination or thought, but God forfend I resign my creativity to the cutting floor of prompt engineering. I have other uses of Generative AI; it won’t be for my blogs.

One key detail in my interlocutor’s comment was that he wrote a blog daily, regardless of the length of the blog. I know a few people who if they stop overthinking their copy and simply proofread the blogs in draft, they might rise to publishing at least once a month rather than every five or so months. I’ll be circumspect and not mention names.

It speaks for itself

I do wish I could blog daily, and I have done before. What saddens me is the many who blogged over a decade ago that have abandoned this theatre of sharing ideas for all sorts of reasons. The Internet rarely forgets as you stumble over crumbling tombstones of their once commendable activities.

The way social media works, you are either doing it because you enjoy it for your own leisure, or you are farming engagement to eventually gain some pecuniary benefit. I enjoy this stuff, and what would not happen is an upstart magazine inviting me to write for them and then sending me a style guide to conform to their way of thinking. I try not to take it as an insult.

I do it my way

On my blog, I have my own space, set my own rules, and after sampling a few of my blogs in all that time, it is impossible to gauge how I write, it is unlikely you will like my style, and we shouldn't waste each other’s time. Thank you.

Then one final note of gratitude to my readers and those that have been inspired in a small or large way by what I do.

Thought Picnic: Big Brother contributing to the decline in human civilisation

An appeal to the savage

If reality television had an audience like me, that genre of entertainment would have long since died out like the dodo, never to be revived again, except for a retrospective on one of the darkest ages of humanity, where the surfeit of education and enlightenment, along with significant technological innovation, has made our behaviour resemble that of wild animals driven by nothing but survival instinct.

Readers of my blog are likely aware that I am hardly a fan of these unscripted interactions that caricature the worst of a few for the spectacle of the many. I have allowed myself the occasional glimpse into talent shows, experiencing some surprise or shock, especially from the unexpected gems that can bring tears of sadness or joy.

Our escape is not enviable

Everything I observe is usually through snippets and playback on YouTube, because something has crept into my social media feed, or it has been granted more importance in the news than is ever necessary, considering everything else happening in the world. Yet, these are seen as an escape or distraction, and somehow these fleeting shots of the dehumanisation of our civilisation have become hot topics of public engagement.

By now, you may have realised that one aspect of this reality television series encompasses every variation of the Big Brother shows, whether featuring celebrities or everyday people. At times, one might think that the money paid to celebrities to subject themselves to scrutiny, or the prize offered to public participants, lures them into this macabre theatre where humans are caged for titillation and entertainment. It is popular culture, sadly.

There is more to this—a quest for a spectrum of notoriety, alongside the cohesion or dispersal of virtue, expressed in word, deed, contest, chicanery, or some other unwholesome thing. People have gone on to forge careers from either fame or infamy displayed in these settings.

This theatre of the worst

In my view, Big Brother represents the absolute worst of everything; the house is, in fact, a cage. The 24-hour camera focuses on everyone, with edited versions of the sensational and controversial being spewed from a broadcast drainpipe, reeking of sickening human waste on our televisions.

It contains every element of an animal zoo, where curiosities taken from their natural habitat are brought to a location for our fascination. I have long since eschewed visiting zoological gardens or sea life centres that are nowhere near the sea.

I see in Big Brother a schemed setup that gathers many people with issues and problems better kept from view—opinions that should barely be invited into thought, fragile egos, those too easily offended, and others with rather forthright views considered too confrontational for the baseline of the insipid inclusivity that defies essential common sense.

Imagine placing a chicken, a fox, a cat, a mouse, a crocodile, a venomous snake, a mongoose, a lion, a deer, an elephant, a horse, and a hyena in the same cage and observing what occurs. Like prey and predator, the vulnerable and the inviolable, the aggressive and the docile, the fearful and the bold—every characteristic on display, all while the intervention against nature punishes each animal for acting out its known role.

Utterly thin-skinned lionhearts

Everyone knows that Big Brother does not present a paradise of easy coexistence, and this is where it gains its gawping audience, peering through the cages to observe examples of themselves portrayed by others. It is utterly, utterly loathsome, but then, each to their own.

The current Celebrity Big Brother, which features a range of forgettable has-beens, has invaded my timeline, leaving me to wonder how people fall apart at simple criticism of their abilities. The truth cannot be told about too many individuals who, due to their lack of communication and basic social skills, take offense at a look or a comment. The total absence of nuance or irony in a situation that participants have willingly subscribed to shows how ill-prepared they are for the kind of life many of us face.

Is that all he said? Or is that what they did? Then, there are many more questions along that line of thinking within the context of feigned political correctness, orchestrated niceness, and playing to the gallery.

Big Brother is both a reflection of a microcosm of the basest instincts of its participants and, for those of us engaged, either explicitly or by scant observation, we have become so civilised that we have lost all means of understanding what the advancement of civilisation truly means. Our brains are better stimulated by this tragedy of the jungle in a zoo of humans.

One is hardly sleeping enough

Another remedy to try

A hot bath with Epsom salts and English mustard comes from the yet unwritten book of Brian' s remedies. He has similar ideas that I have sniffed at which might even work, but I am always a sceptic first until persuaded.

Beyond that, he has recommended chamomile tea; his advice is an earworm. However, when I think of chamomile, I think of a lotion, and the last time I applied it to soothe my skin was during an episode of shingles in June 2009.

Obviously, I need to find something to deal with insomnia; in fact, sleep seems to arrive at any time rather than at designated times for that activity. I use my weekends to catch up on all the sleep I could not get during the week.

Keeping awake doing

While I do not feel the same level of fatigue I had during and for the few months after radiotherapy, there is still a lot of tiredness that hits you in the middle of the day, no matter how much you try to stimulate yourself. With the lack of caffeine, you just depend on nature to stay alert and focused.

Then, in my waking hours deep into the witching hour, I cannot idle about; I just completed five difficult Sudoku puzzles, as if that would tire out my brain. Besides, nocturia is an issue too; whenever I get some sleep, I wake up to pass water, usually four times during the night. I have hit the litre mark a few times this week, and I do not drink as much water as Brian insists I should.

It will get better

I have made a few adjustments, like taking my pills earlier and resisting the urge to drink late into the evening, but I sometimes have a dry mouth, for which swilling cranberry juice might be too great a luxury if you do not swallow after you taste it. I used to drink sparkling water, but I stopped because fizzy drinks do not help urinary function after radiotherapy.

I hate still water, yet I find myself having a glass or two, but never as much as necessary. What I have avoided all along is medically induced sleep; however, the insomnia is a long- term side effect of radiotherapy. I know sleep will eventually come, but I must find ways to prevent this from ruining a productive day.

Men's things - XXIII

Ignoring the specifics

I was looking forward to my hospital appointment set for Friday, the 4^th of April 2025, though I seemed to have a different level of expectations, for my last visit to The Christie Hospital was the 9^th of October 2024, when I took my last session of hypofractionated radiotherapy to the prostate gland.

In my euphoria about what the visit might entail, I was already announcing to others that it was going to be a conclusive kind of meeting, ignoring the fact that it was a nurse-led urology clinic. Maybe I chose to ignore the details, expecting something that was not on offer.

I was neither consulting with a doctor nor an oncologist; I was meeting with a nurse from urology when every other consultation I had attended from July last year was with a multidisciplinary team with an oncology perspective.

My engagement with urology ended in another hospital after the referral for the multiparametric MRI scan of the prostate gland, which led to an ultrasound-guided transperineal biopsy of the prostate, indicative of cancer, after which I was handed over to The Christie Hospital.

A name mangled

On arrival at the hospital, I was electronically checked in and ushered into the waiting room through a labyrinth of passages in Department 22. This visit was not as daunting as the very first, the place was familiar enough, buzzing with activity and full of medical personnel and the many who required their expertise.

When the nurse called my name, I heard another mangled version of it, a steady reading of the arrangement of vowels and consonants would have garnered applause for a brave attempt, but it was such that I had to mutter to the hearing of others, that name has been murdered again. However, there was no doubt that I was the patient being called to an examination room.

She offered to have another go at my name with my guidance, if she deigned to get much better, I doubt it could be achieved without a major surgical intervention. Even Brian’s attempts at Yoruba words and phrases bring such mirth, for the jollity he presents, we can overlook his incapacity.

Assessing the PSAs

When the urology nurse arrived some 15 minutes later, it became obvious that this was just an assessment meeting, one to determine how I was coping to the symptoms around radiotherapy and to enquire whether I needed additional support medically or mentally, and to answer any questions I might have.

It seemed they had lost the test results for the bloods taken on the eve of commencing radiotherapy when I attended the planning review in late August. She was using the readings presented in March last year, which on the surface suggested a considerable improvement, but I knew that there was a slight change in relation to the blood work done last week.

The Prostate-specific Antigen (PSA) result was slightly elevated but within range and higher than the result in August, but well below that which set us on this journey in March 2024. We agreed to have another meeting in four months rather than another six months, and I left to bask in the sunshine of beautiful South Manchester.

Lest I forget, I had a conversation with the Uber driver about Men’s things. I find that I am also being asked to share my experience; I might have to create slides to explain the intricacies of the prostate and the reasons for having early investigations and interventions on intimate issues.

Men's Things Blogs

Blog - Men's things - Prostate Cancer blogs

Blog - Men's things

Blog - Men's things - II

Blog - Men's things - III

Blog - Men's things - IV

Blog - Men's things - V

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Blog - Men's things - VII

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Blog - Men's things - IX

Blog - Men's things - X

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Blog - Men's things - XIV

Blog - Men's things - XV

Blog - Men's things - XVI

Blog - Men's things - XVII

Blog - Men's things - XVIII

Blog - Men's things - XIX

Blog - Men's things - XX

Blog - Men's things - XXI

Blog - Men's things - XXII

Springing forward and losing time

Time shifting around

I seem to be better adjusted to the concept and the reality of daylight saving, and while I cannot fully explain the benefits of it, nor do I intend to research it for this blog, the phenomenon has a way of catching up with me.

I have adopted an American aide memoire in understanding how we change our clocks in October and March, usually on the last Sunday of the month. We Spring Forward and Fall Backward. Fall is the American version of our English Autumn.

As most clocks in the home are electronic, especially on computers and watches, whether you gain or lose an hour whilst asleep at 2:00 AM can go without notice, the alarm clock will still go off at the set time.

A wind-up situation

When it comes to clocks on devices and appliances like microwaves or standard ovens, especially if you are a time obsessive, you notice you have lost an hour in the spring or gained one in the autumn.

When I used to have mechanical clocks around the home, I changed the time before I went to bed; it made the change in time more manageable.

For Brian, in the spring we enter a time of just having an hour’s difference between us, rather than two hours. It represents some closeness, but not close enough in distance.

A circadian disruption

In my case, the apparent coping mechanism for British Summer Time has not kicked in; my body clock is yearning for something that suggests an unnatural event has occurred; adjustments governed by the reading of the time are not compensated for in my biorhythms.

My circadian rhythm is out of whack, and that is not helped by my early mornings feeling like a winter that has refused to depart. The sun offers a glowing spectacle during the day, but we cannot expect more than 18° Celsius for the rest of the week.

It is a struggle to keep alert without stimulation of vigorous activity or the exhilaration of caffeine intake. I have, in times past, pinched myself or given my ankle tendon a kick, inflicting just enough pain to jolt myself back to life. Then, maybe it is still the residual side effects of radiotherapy, who really knows?

We break the codes of time for pecuniary advantage, more light in the evening for spring and summer, and the greater benefit for farmers in the autumn and winter. What you cannot fail to notice is that when the sun shines, we make the best of it, getting the warmth and a bit of a tan too, in Manchester, of all places.

Thought Picnic: The stereotype of a hypersexual black man persists

Just trying to help

The first thing that came to mind was whether I had just missed an Emmett Till moment, though the comparison is a bit too severe; England has never been the American South of the 1950s, but some stereotypes are so ingrained that people act on them before reality and modernity can adjust their thinking.

I was walking home when I saw two ladies seemingly in a rush, going in one direction and then the opposite, wondering aloud if they were headed the right way. As I overheard them, and being quite familiar with the area, I thought I could help, so I inquired about which direction they wanted to go.

As I looked back, a man approached me and asked what I was looking at. His aggression was met with equal disdain. "What is your problem?" I retorted. He claimed that I was the problem, to which I suggested he should go home and not look for trouble because I had no time for crazy people.

The stereotypes betraying us

He blurted out, “That’s my wife you are looking at.” A strapping (I guess in the dark, appearances can be deceptive) black man, and I am hardly that, going after and ogling a white woman with rampant sexual desire?

Maybe if I could whistle, but the ladies did not even deserve an anachronistic catcall, but let’s not disparage the innocent. It did look like an Emmett Till moment, as a white man had just suggested I had disrespected his wife by looking lustfully at her.

Where did this kind of thinking emerge from, and how could it even be expressed so strongly in Manchester of 2025? The situation was about to escalate totally out of control if I did not have a response or chose to walk away, which was the wise choice.

Easing the built-up tension

I replied, “I am a gay man, I am not interested in your wife; I was only asking if I could help.” He showed character; immediately he offered a profuse apology, saying he was very sorry for making a wrong assumption. His wife joined him, and they both pleaded for being unnecessarily defensive; they asked for my name and introduced themselves.

We shook hands as they explained they were out looking for their friend, who they thought was lost. They were a bit distressed about it and did not know what to do. I gave them some encouragement and wished them well as we parted ways. I was just a block away from home.

The present is the past

On reflection, I thought about how suspicion and the exchange of coarse words could have led to a fracas and needlessly so. How we are informed by the stereotypes of others until we seek to learn more about their story out of interest and engagement rather than an initial dislike based on falsehoods.

How in the UK, we are fortunate that even the irrational is contained in the exchange of words before it becomes physical, hurtful, and sometimes fatal.

Then, the basic willingness to hear the other out and listen can diffuse the most tense (as I use British rather than American English, "most tense" is the most appropriate superlative for tense, rather than "tensest" in American English) situations; someone had to be ready to play the pipes of peace before we come within the sound of the drums of war.

It was both an unsettling and teachable moment. We might have come a long way, but that basic animal instinct is always ready to impose itself on our unsteady coexistence.

This Humpty Dumpty does get up

Ambitions live on

If ever I needed to be reminded, I was chasing waterfalls when I should have, for now, stuck to the rivers and lakes that have grounded me after that prostate cancer diagnosis in June last year, I faced a brutal reality on Wednesday night.

Inadvertently, I found myself having completed more than 10,000 steps in the previous six days, not out of deliberate effort, but in the drudgery of everyday events. That realisation on Wednesday indicated I needed just over 5,000 steps to make it 7 days in a row, a feat I have not achieved in quite a long time.

Maybe, make it a charted and timed walk, which records pace, heart rate for intensity, cadence and some other interesting, though mundane data along with the time to recovery. I set out on a route I had not plied in over a year, thinking I would catch the breeze on my walk.

Brought to ground suddenly

I was barely over a kilometre into my walk and out of nowhere, I do not think I tripped, my legs and feet seemed to scatter below my frame, and my brain kindly suggested I was going down. I was soon tumbling down, breaking my fall with my left knee and hands that thankfully had leather gloves on.

There was some momentum in the fall, and I rolled into half the outer lane of a dual carriageway that was not well-lit. I was so fortunate that no cars were coming. I picked myself up, took a few strides and rested on a wall as I caught my breath.

Someone waiting at the bus stop opposite must have seen it because he called from across the road to enquire if I was alright. I could only lift my hand in a gesture towards him.

A fresh whitish knee

A few minutes later, the debate was ongoing in my head about whether to continue or return home, my knee seething with the rage of a graze, my determination was to continue, and so I did to complete 13,408 steps for the day.

When I eventually got to look at my knee, I had revealed almost a square inch of flesh, but not much of a bleed compared to how I did not stop bleeding after I went for blood tests on Tuesday, and my shirt was stained.

There is a lot that I want to do, but I am not where I think I am; certain limitations constrain me even as I defy natural laws to do more than my body seems equipped for currently. The recovery process, as I am gently told by both my body and advisors, will take a while, I need to be patient with myself and adjust my goals within the framework of mental and physical abilities.

I have continued to exceed the 10,000-step goal, while my knee is not healing as fast as I had hoped. Meanwhile, Brian suggests I apply a dash of methylated spirit, considering how he’ll bawl at the application of a denatured and non-alcoholic dressing. Two fingers to my eyes and pointing those fingers at him.