Take that to the Bank

There it is, said Shalamar as they scoured the High Streets looking for somewhere to stash their top 40 gold. No doubt hunting in vain for a HSBC or Midland bank. This hit from 1978 added to that vast horde of riches.

On a completely unrelated vein, I was embraced by the warm and friendly glow seeping from the local team of phlebotomists at Labtests on Saturday.
As usual I strayed into the corporately fashioned designer interior, imbued with a warm inviting slick gloss of caring responsibility.....but still sterile none the less. I took a seat, then returned it. After a while an exotic voice called me over and directed me to room 4. I followed her orders and took another chair following the man in front of me as I went....

After the by now well rehearsed pleasantries, we settled into our respective roles. For the her, the ever efficient health professional, for me the slightly squeamish and agliophobic customer.

"Can you please confirm your name and date of  birth please"

Why yes certainly I can, the sight of impending blood doesn't actually cause my memory to fail.

"And for security reasons, your address"

For security reasons !? Was this in fact the SIS, (New Zealand's top intelligence bureau, with more spooks than a haunted house fair ride)

"Sorry, force of habit, I used to work in a bank" she weakly smiled. More embarrassed perhaps by her past employment in these recession hit times, rather than her slightly foolish mistake?

In a bank? I laughingly retorted....Shall I utilise that obvious pun? Yes let's do it...

Was it a blood bank? Ha! A stunning punning victory for me I think!

"No" she replied, flatly "it was Westpac"

Nothing. No smile, no laugh or wink, no acknowledgment of the recent linguistic tool whatsoever.

I felt like a total clot.

Video killed the Radio Star?

Or so Buggles mused in 1979, when the future seemed bright and goggly, more UVF than VHF.
Not so says the radio in the background, frantically waving it's antennae and speakers about in a frankly cheesy manner.

As the world  fast forwarded, we watched the epic cellulose battle between Beta and VHS, and still the the dear old wireless went from strength to strength. Video shops boomed everywhere. Soon every house had a video recorder, complete with enormous cabinets housing huge libraries of bulky rectangular tapes. 
I remember the language firmly asserting itself in our collective consciousness. We started to "tape" stuff, and forgetting to "set the video" became a national sport. How many of us can remember "taping over" a cherished memory with a hastily recorded EastEnders, or Brookside replacing the Royal Wedding.
But now the video is  dead, killed by shiny new plastic discs, and digital downloads are now the norm.

Why then do I still want to "tape" Sky? Or when I press series link, do I then affirm that I have set the video? 

On a similar vein, I occasionally wonder whether I have missed my evening injection, or I forgotten to go to dialysis! So much for 40 years of conditioning and habits.

Oh well, time to eject this thought and get on with playing the programme..

Wot?

Long before "Estuary English" swept our world, we just had Londoners....and Captain Sensible was one of those entertaining capital city dwellers. Wot was his second hit single after 1982's Happy Talk.. No, seriously "Wot" WAS his follow up hit...This former singer from The Damned made an eminently sensible choice to go it alone..
Less sensible were the 'goings on' and machinations of  last Friday. Was there a medical mishap (so oft the muse of these posts?), an amusing but avoidable altercation with a fellow human being? No, This drama was solely the result of my striving for hygienic perfection.

On my way home last week, I stopped at lights, and whilst counting down the seemingly interminable minutes, I decided to clean and refresh my hands. Having reached and secured the hand gel from my cup holder, I deftly flipped open the lid and squeezed. It was if a medicimally minded aseptic llama had suddenly sneezed on my hands.

The resultant wave of liquefied gel engulfed my hands like a hygienic tsunami. Aghast, I looked down at my hands, then the steering wheel, and back again. How to drive without  making the wheel wet and slippery? Time for action, as the lights started to turn to green....I quickly tried to wipe the gel from my hands, leaving a trail of gel like an anti bacterial Gastropod. I gripped the edge of the wheel using my palms, blowing rapidly on the drying digits. A quick hand waggle on the way to the gear stick, and I was dry, safe to resume my journey in accordance with the road code. 

I must remember to move the hand gel from the car so it doesn't heat up and liquefy. That would be rather sensible. Wot?

Sweet Dreams (are made of this)

Who am I to disagree? Standing in a cow field and being "worried" by malevolent looking Frisians was a strange video choice for their breakthrough hit of 1983, but the Eurythmics certainly made their dreams much sweeter after this classic bought them the sweet smell of success.

At that time, my sweet experiences were artificially limited to saccharin.The chemically enhanced and flavoured sugar "substitute" was the nation's tried and tested diabetic/slimmer's beverage sweetener. It was a poor imitation though,with an unpleasant simulated taste, leaving a lingering metallic tang.This was something the manufacturers went to great lengths to disguise. However with unalluring names like Sweet "N" Low, Splenda, Hermesetas and Sucryl it should not have been to hard to spot.

Like a monocular modified pair of spectacles: they do work, but the overall effect is rather odd..

Thankfully those saccharin days are gone....or have they?

The NZ Pharmaceutical Agency (Pharmac) has changed supplier of my tacrolimus anti rejection pills in an effort to save costs on the public purse. The lucky new recipient of the golden contract is Sandoz. Previously Novartis, (a merger of Ciba Geigy snd Sandoz) in 1899, the Swiss chemical giant started to commercially produce .........saccharin!

As I gave up saccharin long ago, (the taste really was excruciatingly bad), I hope my impending reuinion with Sandoz and their lab's products is much sweeter...

Three is the Magic Number

Three is the magic number! Did the late eighties rap band De La Soul have a psychic premonition? Were they perhaps privy to some medical secret known only to themselves and Nostradamus? 

For did the soothsayer scribe "in the year 2014, cometh the third year of passing by the new part for the once afflicted sugary one”

Had he done so this may have been inaccurately predicted as a foretelling of the appearance of the iPhone phenomenon, the sinking of the Costa Concordia or some such unrelated malarkey. 

Demonstrably fact beyond doubt is the anniversary of my recycled kidney and pancreas.

For indeed it is three years since my shrivelled and frankly useless organs were given a palpable boost by the transplant this very week! In sugar terms, three years is a wealth of new cakes, biscuits and curious confections to discover, and I have the waistline to prove that as well.

Three years with no diabetic hypos, no further eye damage, no damaging daily dialysis, no 45 minutes trips to dialysis there and back three time s a week, no more injections, or daily blood tests. And no more ghastly laxative diabetic chocolate and low-cal drinks.

Three is a magic number, and may there be many more of them, or so I predict.