I’ve imagined my own death countless times, in countless ways.

I’ve pictured myself passing quietly in a sterile white hospital room, alone, at a very old age, in the dark.

I’ve seen myself collapse in the street, clutching my chest, suddenly and without warning.

I’ve thought about all manner of violent death too, from a horrible car crash, to being brutally beaten senseless by a gang of teenage thugs.

I’ve thought about this a lot, too much, to the point of it being easily labelled a decades’ old obsession.

Its not really death that I fear, its the process of dying and my morbid curiosity at how I will go, whenever that time comes.

Will it be painful?

Will I suffer?

Will I linger?

Will it take long?

Is it going to happen soon?

The roots of my fear of death were planted by my father. He was an older dad, I was the child of a second marriage who came late in his life. He talked about dying all the time and how he just wanted to live long enough to see me and my brother right in the world.

As a child, hearing this mantra of his frequently, I worried about his death a lot. I was close with my father when I was a child, his talk of death scared me and dug deep into my sub-conscious, where it remains to this day.

As it turned out, he lived a pretty long life, but had an unpleasantly long and drawn out death. From his diagnosis to his passing, it took about a year, with his health declining steadily in between. The last couple of months were particularly bad, with his decline ever more steep and his hopes dashed with each treatment option failing. His final days were spent heavily medicated, but he was at home, in his own bed when he drew his last breath.

As deaths go, I’d give it a 6, he loses points for the duration of suffering, but gains some for being able to choose to be at home. Also, he scores well on the life to death ratio, he lived to be 84 and was sick for only a year.

You can’t really do a scorecard for death, each one is unique.

There’s an old joke about a guy who, when asked how he’d like to die, said “when I’m 100 years old I’d like to be shot by a jealous husband”. That sounds like an OK way to go, as long as you’re a sprightly 100.

My mother’s death, unlike my father’s, was relatively quick, happening over about 48 hour period, from becoming ill to slipping quietly away.

Where my mother loses out is in the quality of life stakes, she had a massive stroke about 7 years before, which left her severely impaired.

She couldn’t walk, had a lot of trouble talking too, and her coordination was particularly poor. For the 7 years she survived after the stroke, she was dependent upon help for absolutely everything, like dressing, washing, eating and going to the toilet. Its no way for anyone to live, or rather exist.

When my mother had the stroke and was being treated in the hospital, my father was given a choice of whether or not to put her on life support.

He had been told it was a very bad stroke and her recovery would be problematic and never complete. He was also aware my mother had a living will, which pretty much said, if she was ever in this position, not to take drastic measures to keep her alive if the prognosis for recovery was grim.

My father ignored my mother’s wishes and said yes to the life support. He couldn’t bare to think of life without my her nor could he imagine her not making a full recovery. Nature would have killed my mother off then and there, peacefully, in her sleep, but instead my father chose to use every miracle machine known to modern medicine to sustain my mother’s life.

His mantra to all hospital staff became this: “She walked into this hospital on her own and she’s damn well going to walk back out”.

How wrong he was.

My father could have spared my mother seven years of a horrible existence, but he was selfish. He paid for this decision himself as his life got much harder when my mother was finally allowed to go home after several months in the hospital and a rehab facility.

My mother could only get around in a wheelchair and had several medical appointments a week that my father had to transport her to, unaided. He was in his 80s.

He refused all assistance at first, and not until he was overwhelmed, did he relent and hire some home help.

My father’s own death obsession kicked into overdrive and his new catchphrase became this: “What would happen to my wife if something happened to me?” This thought ran through his head constantly, it kept him up at night, he mentioned it every time he spoke to me. His fear of his own death now had a tangible focus, my mother’s fate.

What you think about can become real, as it wasn’t too long after this that they found a large, malignant and inoperable tumour in his bladder. Thus began his one year decline into death.

The “what to do about my mother” question became intertwined with the “beating this cancer” goal. “If I can just beat this cancer,” thought my father. “then I can continue to care for my wife.” It took him a few months to realise he couldn’t and the part time home help turned into a full time, live in carer for both of them.

When my father died, my mother continued to live in their house, with the live in carer. As it turned out, she would have had enough money to continue living this way, which was what I wanted for her, but her fear helped her decide to move into a care home. It was a good one, but expensive, more expensive than staying in her home, but it was my mother’s choice.

My mother spent the last five plus years of her life in that care home, before slipping into a coma and dying in a hospital bed, alone and unconscious. She should have died many years before, her life was no richer for those last, post-stroke years of hardship and suffering.

We all have to face death in all its varied forms and permutations. Death and dying come in many assorted flavours.

I lost four friends and many more colleagues, who all died while doing what we do, covering the news. I’ve been a journalist for over 20 years and when I was younger and more foolish, put myself in harm’s way too.

I’ve spent time in war zones and other dangerous places and the people I work with still do, every day, to tell you about people and places many people don’t give a shit about. Hey ho.

My four friends who all perished while working abroad, had quick, yet violent deaths. I’m not going get into any great detail here, Three of them were chased by armed men or rebels before being gunned down, one was killed by a stray, unexpected mortar shell. Each death effected me personally and professionally in quite profound ways.

All four of them were relatively young, some left behind partners and children. Each one was a decent, thoughtful and respected colleague and journalist.

One of these deaths was particularly hard on me because I was on duty when the news broke. I was working on a news desk, the central point of contact for everyone in my organisation. A lot of the telephone calls I received were from distraught people all over the world, waking up to the news of the death of a close friend. Many were in tears, many wanted me to tell them that the news got it wrong.

I wish I could have.

When death comes to the young and good, its particularly hard on those left behind, trying to make sense of out it, trying to understand it.

I’ll tell you something right now, there is no sense in any senseless death, there is no understanding. Shit happens, you just deal with it as best you can.

After that spate of deaths, my industry tried to improve on safety. More hostile environment training was brought in, safety advisors in dangerous places are deployed regularly now, but journalists still continue to be killed in the line of duty.

Losing friends makes you think about your own mortality, not that I needed any help.

There are two other friends I lost, both of their deaths remarkably similar.

They were both about the same age, both had similar interests and lifestyles. One was a musician, the other a journalist.

Both of my friends were 50 years old when they died, both had massive heart attacks. One was found in his flat, sitting in his favourite chair, the other was at home with his partner and fell over dead as he got up from the sofa. Both died fairly instantly and may not have had much time to work out what was happening.

Both used viagra and cocaine regularly and drank heavily too. You don’t need to be a doctor to work out that’s a bad combination.

As I get older, my death obsession seems to have more things to fuel it.

People my age (I’m pushing 50) die from all sorts of things, natural and otherwise. I think about my health more often. I don’t actually do much about it, but I think about it…does that count for anything?

I get my cholesterol and glucose checked regularly, along with my blood pressure. All are good, especially my cholesterol, which was 3.1 at my most recent test. I don’t look like I should have low cholesterol, but I do. Go figure.

None of that means I’m immune from whatever’s lurking out there, waiting to pounce on me. I don’t drink at all, but I do smoke, cigarettes and weed. I don’t exercise, I don’t watch my diet and I work only nights. Not exactly the regime you’d pay a thousand quid a day for at a health farm.

If you would pay a grand a day to live my lifestyle, get in touch, I’d be happy to sort you out, as long as you are happy always being high and masturbating several times a day, but not in public, because that’s just gross.

Will it be a heart attack that gets me? My father had one of those.

How about a stroke? My mother’s got that covered.

Cancer? It got most of my aunts and uncles on my mother’s side.

Car accident? I think about it every time I get behind the wheel. Will this be my last journey? Is there a drunk driver or overtired lorry driver out there with with me in his sights?

How about some freak accident, like a plummeting jet engine a’la Donny Darko? A stray bullet from some silly gang related shooting on my north London ghetto street? That could happen too.

Terrorism, viral pandemic, earthquake, tornado, take your pick, the news is full of so many lethal things.

There are so many ways I could die and not knowing how its going to turn out for me is a genuine obsession.

But would I really want to know how I’m going to die?

Wouldn’t it be the ultimate spoiler?

If there was a box I could click online that would reveal the details of my death, would I click it?

Would I really want to know the big three facts about my inevitable death; when? where? how?

Hell, yes! I would definitely click that box. And then I am sure I would regret it.

What would I do if I did knew the details of my death?

I’d try to cheat it, if I could. If I knew a bus was going to hit me on the high street next Friday, I’d damn make sure I was someplace else.

But what if I couldn’t cheat it, some horrible disease or medical catastrophe that couldn’t be avoided. What would I do with that knowledge, that my own body was a ticking time bomb, waiting to go off on a certain date?

Would I get my affairs in order, whatever that means?

Would I make a bucket list and try to cram whatever time I had left on doing things I suddenly felt were important?

Or would I just sit quietly, awaiting destiny, safe with the knowledge that my fate was well and truly sealed?

Who knows? I’ll never find out.

There is no real way to know when you’re going to die. Some people do find out the “how” from their doctors, along with a rough timescale, but I think that’s about as close as it gets. In that situation, I’d have no choice but to know.

Whether or not knowing would be helpful, well, who’s to say?

Whatever does get me, is out there somewhere right now, in the world or inside my body. Whether its today, tomorrow, next week, next year or next century is anybody’s guess. Who knows what miracles science might provide in the next decades?

There are two things I’ve always thought would happen to help people cheat death.

One is my view that ageing is simply a genetic disorder that eventually will be corrected with gene therapy. I think they are close to this discovery, isolating what it is in our DNA that makes our bodies age and then figuring out how to manipulate it and switch it off. It may sound like sci-fi, but its not and it will have all sorts of ethical and practical implications for the future of our planet.

Perhaps only the super rich will benefit from this discovery, maybe it will be available to anyone and everyone. Maybe it will be mandatory. Maybe it will be kept a secret.

While not delivering real immortality, it certainly would be a massive step in that direction, as long as you’re not hit by that bus on the high street.

The second scientific innovation that I think will eventually come, will be the ability to import (ingest? upload? scan? pick a verb) the entire contents of a human brain into a computer. Once you can do that, you could effectively recreate a person’s consciousness and construct a virtual world for them to exist inside. As long as you had a sustainable power source, this theoretically could deliver immortality for all.

Imagine being able to continue your existence in a perfect digital world, freed of the constraints of your flesh. For all intensive purposes, this digital world would be as real as our world and your sense of self, your identity, who you are, would be the same too. You would be reunited with your friends, your relatives, your loved ones, to spend eternity together in the most wonderful place imaginable.

That sounds a lot like heaven in the traditional sense, with one key difference. The heaven of our ancestors was an imaginary idea, this heaven I propose would be built by man and could one day really exist.

Do I think I’ll see these innovations in my lifetime? That’s the trillion dollar question.

I think the genetic discovery is not that far off, but its use in practise much further. Its unlikely in my socio-economic class that I will have access to it, if it is in my time.

The digital afterlife is harder to predict, as guessing at the future capabilities of computer equipment and the rate of change is slightly more complex than Moore’s Law would have you believe. Advances in quantum computing are making the news and once the real breakthrough happens, we very well may end up with more affordable computer power than anyone can currently imagine.

The singularity, anyone?

Once the contents of a human brain can be uploaded into a computer of unimaginable power, a multiverse of possibilities awaits. If I can live long enough to see that happen, I will be very lucky indeed.

I don’t hold out much hope.

I’ve always thought these amazing innovations would come the day after I die.

So it goes, as Vonnegut used to say.

That leaves me with a death obsession that won’t be resolved until its my time to shake off this mortal coil.

At least I have a pastime. They say having a hobby adds years to your life.

Another year has flown by and I’m already celebrating my anniversary of being the northlondonhippy, again.

And by celebrating, of course I mean writing this.

Whoopeeee…

Seven years ago today I started my original website on Blogger. Its still there, though I moved everything to this, my own hosted website a few years ago.

Go me!

Back at the beginning, I posted quite frequently, mainly because I had nothing better to do.

Blogging sprouted from a relatively brief period of unemployment , it gave me something to do with my time, when I wasn’t getting high or gobbling magic mushrooms, which were legal at the time.

You didn’t think I was going to get through this without a mention of shrooms, did you? Shrooms played an important part in the early days and I was a regular consumer of them. Since the government tightened up the regulations, I’ve been without them. I miss them, a lot. Shroom reference ends.

Flash forward to seven years into the future, to this very day and you’ll see that I hardly post anything, any more. There’s probably more posts about my lack of posts, than any other subject.

I don’t even attempt to make excuses any more, I’ve just accepted that my participation here is sporadic and random. I pop up whenever I feel like it, I just don’t feel like it very often.

That’s not strictly true, as I seem to continue to maintain a running list of topics I want to cover, I just don’t seem to get around to doing it. Then, whatever the topic might be, becomes less interesting to me, or less relevant and I delete it from my list and it just never gets written.

I’m back to making excuses again. Sorry, I’ll stop now.

It would be easier if I could just beam my thoughts directly to the internet, I think that’s coming as a feature this summer in the iPhone 5, but don’t quote me on that. I wouldn’t want to be starting that sort of a rumour.

I know I bang on about Twitter a lot, but I do spend a lot more time there than I do on my own website. If you did want to bathe in the weird thoughts flowing through my head on a daily basis, that remains the best place to do it. Though again, my participation is random and sporadic. I consume far more than I contribute to Twitter, but I do suffer from information gluttony and tech addiction.

That’s probably one of the biggest changes to my life in the last seven years, the amount of technology in it. I’ve always liked tech and toys, but here in the future, they are more pervasive and useful than ever before and I find that I am always connected, always consuming media.

A typical day starts with me picking my iPhone up from the bedside table, switching off airplane mode and letting it check my email. I put it in airplane mode when I go to bed, so it doesn’t ding or buzz with new messages, but I leave it on because it is also my back up alarm clock.

I come downstairs and fire up my iMac, which is the hub of my technological existence. The hard drive in it died last week and its being repaired this very second. Don’t worry, I have a TimeMachine back up, so I don’t think I’ve lost very much at all, but I am missing my 27” beast very much.

I’ve been using my lifeboat computer in the meantime, an original black MacBook that I think is nearly 5 years old. While I’m thankful that I’ve got it to use now, its painfully slow, its got about 25% of the screen space of my iMac and the viewing angle of the LCD screen is not very good. Five years is a very long time in tech termss and my MacBook is definitely showing its age. Its better than nothing, loads better!

Anyway, my normal routine with the iMac is to switch it on as soon as I wake up, read the papers online, along with a few other websites, check my RSS feed reader, keep an eye on Twitter, do some work on some other websites I work on, deal with professional and personal emails, sync and charge my iPhone and control my Mac Mini.

My Mac Mini is around 4 and a 1/2 years old and is also showing its age. I use it as my media hub, its connected to my flatscreen tv and my A/V amp. I use it to play music (streamed around my house to two AirPort Express units, one in the kitchen, one in my bedroom), I also stream online radio stations the same way. I use the BBC’s iPlayer service, I download and playback videos from Bit Torrent, I use it to screen XVID films friends give me, or even just to playback videos I’ve shot myself. It gets used a lot. I mostly control the Mac Mini with a remote control, or I use OS X Screen Sharing to remotely use control it from the iMac.

My iMac is a powerful computer, I use it to edit video and I mainly use iMovie. I also record my own music, using Logic Pro and a host of external toys and musical instruments that connect to my iMac with ease

Once I’ve done everything I have to do on the iMac, I might move over to the sofa with my iPad. I surf, use Twitter, keep up with my RSS feed, all in a relaxed, comfortable way, but that’s not all I’ve done with it. I’ve also used it to edit video, write blog posts and record music. Some of the music production apps I have are truly amazing, especially Apple’s new GarageBand app. Its easy to lose hours of your day just playing around with it. I’m also a secret Angry Birds HD addict, but shhhh, don’t tell anyone.

My iPhone is always with me and I use it for so many things, its really a Swiss Army Knife of a gadget. Its my calendar, my contact book, my mobile Twitter machine, RSS reader, internet browser, still camera, video camera, music player, film and video player, navigation device, compass, photo editor, video editor, news portal, note taker, audio recorder, gaming device, clock, weather centre, torch, handheld trackpad for my Macs, email client, reference library, text message device, oh and its a telephone and videophone too! It does even more than that, I’m just running out of steam thinking of it all.

My point to all this tech history is that none of this was possible 7 years ago, 2 of the devices I just mentioned couldn’t have even been imagined then.

In 2005, I had a running joke here about my brand new all digital lifestyle, right around the time I bought my first iMac. Its no joke today, my life truly is all digital. So’s yours. So is everyone’s.

They like to describe all this as “disruptive technology” and that’s a pretty accurate term, as long as you don’t see disruption as a necessarily bad thing. I don’t buy CDs any more, I don’t go to record stores any more, because that industry has been disrupted by the ease and availability of music downloads. If you own a chain of music stores, you’re not going to like this sort of disruption, but if you are a keen media consumer, you’re probably pretty happy about it.

Technology isn’t the only thing that’s disrupted my life in the last seven years, there’s also been some illness and some death. When it comes to disruption, nothing else comes close.

Both of my parents passed away since I started this website. My father was already ill when I started it, and his cancer featured frequently back in the day. Somewhere, in the archive, is a post called “Dad’s pissing blood again” and I’m surprised it didn’t win any awards. He died before this blog was a year old.

My mother crossed over to the great beyond at Christmas, two years ago. Nothing fills you with the holiday spirit like a bereavement on Xmas eve, and that applies to the future too, Xmas will now and forever be a reminder of her death.

While my mother had health problems for years, her sudden death was unexpected. My father died slowly over the course of a year and we pretty much knew when his death was coming to the day. I last spoke to him two days before he died and I got to say goodbye. I didn’t have that chance with my mother.

I’ve become old in the last seven years, at least in my head I have. In my head I’m not 48, I’m “pushing 50”. One of those posts I haven’t written is entitled “My unhealthy obsession with death” and I will get around to writing it, mainly because I’m hoping that spitting out a life time of death obsession might help me move past it. Or not. Who knows.

Blogging is like therapy for me sometimes, its a good way to try to work shit out.

I don’t really think I will ever work out my weird obsession with death, specifically my own. I’ve imagined my moment of death so many times, in so many ways, yet I know that none of it has probably come close to whatever horrible fate awaits me, as it awaits us all.

Keep an eye out for my death post, it will be a cheery little number, guaranteed to lift your spirits and make you want to do a happy dance down the street.

The truth is that I feel expendable, disposable and irrelevant because I am getting old. Maybe that’s normal. Maybe there’s no such thing as normal.

I can feel my body breaking down, I discover some new ache or pain on a daily basis. My joints creak, my muscles throb, my bones ache and I’ve been diagnosed with a long term health problem that requires daily medication for the rest of my life.

Middle age is a joy.

Middle age is stupidly named. Either you are young or you’re old. I’m old. Physically I am, but in my head I’m still 18 years old and full of all the hopes, ideas and dreams I had at that age. Sad, eh?

I’m the same person I was back then, I might move a bit slower and have loads more knowledge and experience, but I’m still me.

And I still smoke weed.

That was one of my goals when I started blogging, to further the cannabis cause. I’ve been smoking weed every day, for a couple of months shy of 30 years. I would qualify my use as a combination of recreational and medicinal, though its certainly more medicinal these days.

Weed should be legal and the fact that its not shows just how mixed up our current drug policy has become. Cannabis can be so beneficial in so many ways.

Right now, in these difficult and depressing economic times, cannabis is a cash crop our leaders should not be ignoring. A licensed, regulated and more importantly taxed cannabis market would be a much needed boon to the economy. Instead they would rather close schools, hospitals and libraries and let criminals control the market. Its as foolish and shortsighted as it sounds.

I’m not going to bang on about it too much now, my position is clear.

I may not be as prolific as I once was, but there’s a giant archive of nearly 750 posts to explore. You might learn to love me, you might come to hate me, but I’m sure you can waste plenty of time here, if you desire.

So that’s it, my weird and rambling reflection of the last seven years of living my life online, just for you. I’m always here, just a few mouse clicks away. Come hang out with me, any time.

If the first seven years are anything to go by, the next seven ought to be a real gas, man! Groovy!

Technically, I am still the northlondonhippy, I just don’t seem to practise much or preach, not like I used to anyway.

I logged into my own website to do a bit of maintenance and thought I should just say “hey”.

Hey.

Blah blah lame excuse for not posting, sarcastic, self-deprecating joke about being useless here. (attn subs: you think of a gag this time, you think its so fucking easy.)

I haven’t even been on Twitter much, well not posting those tweet-things anyway.

I feel like I am fading away, drifting ever further into irrelevance and obscurity.

Was I anything other than irrelevant? Did I ever actually exit obscurity?

I think we both know the answer to both of those questions.

That’s how I think of my posts, in terms of the two of us; you and me.

Yes, you.

People rarely read together any more, so I know you’re reading this alone. There may be someone else in the room, many someones perhaps, but you are the only one reading this.

You’re probably the only one reading this in your town, city or possibly even your country, if you live outside of the UK or the USA.

Think about that, I’m your little secret, that no one in any reasonable proximity shares with you.

If you think I came home from a draining nightshift, or rather a couple of weeks of draining nightshifts and had a big, fat spliff, you would be correct. If you think my deep self-loathing and abject fear are reaching a crescendo at this very moment, you would right again.

See, you know me as well I as know you. We’re like BFF’s, only you don’t have to buy me a card with a picture of a cute kitten and a caption that says “hang in there, baby!”

If you did, I would probably have to disembowel you and that might put a dampener on the whole BFF thing.

Let’s just be BFF’s that know each other on the internet. They’re the best kind anyway.

You could always just follow me on Twitter and get this sort of rambling nonsense and dark bullshit in smaller doses. Go on, I don’t charge much, its @nthlondonhippy — because there wasn’t space for all the vowels.

PS
Birthday last month, blah blah blah, ageing, getting closer to death, blah blah blah. Now aren’t you glad I didn’t post much in January?

I used to be a sometime blogger who sometimes blogged here, sometimes, but I haven’t posted diddly in nearly 2 months.

Go me.

The usual non-excuse, excuses apply. I’ve got no good reason for doing so little here, except that I am easily distracted by shiny things.

Apparently, being attracted to shiny things is hardwired into our DNA, and is common to many creatures, not just us. Evolution favoured offspring that understood shiny usually meant fresh drinking water. If you could find the fresh water, you could have a healthy drink and live long enough to pass on your water discovery skills to the next generation.

My water comes out of a plastic bottle (oh the shame) or the tap, so I have no real need to be drawn in by shiny things. Damn you evolution.

I am digressing like a motherfucker now.

I’ve toyed with shutting my website down in the past, but I don’t really want to; I like having a site where I can spew and vent when I feel like it. I just don’t feel like it very often.

December and January are shitty months for me anyway, what with xmas and the anniversary of my mother’s untimely demise and my birthday all around the same time, I’d really rather just hibernate until February. I’m not sure how that would work, exactly, but fattening up for a long nap is something I think I could really handle.

There are couple of personal milestones coming up in 2011 that I am looking forward to already: my 20th anniversary of moving to London and my 30th anniversary of smoking weed every day. I look forward to reflecting on both of those things in the future.

Especially the 30th anniversary of smoking dope every day, because once that passes, I’ll be able to say things like “as someone who has smoked cannabis every day for over 30 years…” blah, blah, blah. I can feel the smug self-satisfaction coming on already.

They still lie to us about weed on a regular basis, so isn’t it nice to know your old uncle hippy is here to tell you nothing but the truth about it?

Weed is why I am still around, its saved my life in countless ways on countless occasions. That shit should be legal for adults to possess and consume and in some cases its consumption should be mandatory.

I haven’t given up on common sense prevailing, but I cling to common sense and truth the way a baby clings to its favourite comfort blanket. If you try to take it away from me, I just might cry and wail.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

I hope you’ve all bought new calendars and you aren’t still writing 2009 on your cheques.

Do people still write cheques?

I do, sometimes, but that really doesn’t have anything to do with anything, so I’ll swiftly avoid the diversion in that dead end direction.

Instead, I’ve come to share the latest news from the land of your favourite north London-based hippy. Its actually kind of big news.

Dig this, I submitted “the official northlondonhippy iPhone app” to Apple yesterday, it should be available on the iTunes store very soon for your mobile surfing pleasure.

This isn’t one of my little funny wind-ups, its an honest to god, actual app that runs natively on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

How cool is that?

On the hippy’s cool-o-meter, its off the fucking scale of coolness into a brand new realm of cool that has yet to be discovered by normal folk. Once the app is available, that new realm of cool will be yours for the taking.

The app delivers in an iPhone friendly format, all of my internet content. If I publish something, it will magically pop up on the app. You will receive my latest posts from this website, as well as having easy access to my busy Twitter feed. I’ve also included my TwitPics and YouTube videos, which are all easily accessible inside the app.

How much would you pay for a northlondonhippy iPhone app?

Really? I kind of expected that, which is why it will be available to download for FREE. That’s a price I’m sure you can afford.

My aim is to make this app the number one northlondonhippy iPhone app in the world. I don’t think it will be very hard to do, as it will be the only northlondonhippy app available, at least officially. I’m sure all the other kids will be creating their own versions to compete with mine.

Ah-hem.

I don’t want any of you to think I went off and learned how to write code for an iPhone, because I didn’t. I used a website called www.appmakr.com which automated the process to such a degree that even a moron like me could do it. If you need an app made for the iPhone from RSS feeds, you could do a lot worse than try this site out.

I will of course, reserve final judgement on AppMakr until I see my finished app on my own iPhone, but so far I am very happy with the service they provide. You will be too once you are rocking my app on your muthafuckin’ iPhone.

Keep watching for my announcement confirming that my app is live on iTunes. Until then, you can join me on some tenterhooks as I try to patiently wait for Apple’s approval process people to whatever voodoo that they do.

While I am quite pleased about my app, I am less excited about my birthday this month. Is there a law that says you have to have birthdays? Can we get it repealed?

Some years I am not too bothered about being another year older, but this year is not one of them.

I suppose a lot has to do with the awkwardness of my impending age…forty-fucking-seven. Its an odd number in more ways then one. Mainly, it marks my decent into my “late forties”.

I don’t like the word “late”, it makes me think of death. I think about death enough already, I don’t need stupid words tacked on to my age to remind me that the mortal coil is getting distinctly shorter every year.

My bones tell me, my muscles tell me, my world weary expression tells me, all pretty much on a daily basis. I am plumbing the depths of middle age.

I’ve been contemplating having my very own mid-life crisis, but I can’t seem to settle on what form it will take. On the menu are:

- a grown-up gap year to trek through the Andes
– a hair transplant
– 3 months of Swiss shin stretching
– a small, red, convertible sports car
– a sexually experienced 19 year old girl on the side
– a mental breakdown

I reckon to make it a proper mid-life crisis, I need to chose at least 3 things off that list, then pursue them with gusto.

Trekking anywhere is out, because it sounds too much like hard work.

A hair transplant just sounds messy and expensive and for what? To look like Elton John? No thanks.

If I was going to have my shins stretched, I should have done it 20–30 years ago, but it didn’t exist back then. I don’t think I am going to live long enough to make the pain & suffering worth it. You only gain a couple of inches in height anyway, so screw it, I’d still be short.

The little red convertible sports car is cliche and I don’t really like red as a colour for a car. Unfortunately, because of my age, red is the only colour a car dealer will sell me, at least for a 2 door ragtop. I’ve checked, its a car dealer bylaw, right their in their charter.

Does it all make sense now? That’s why you only ever see bald, fat middle-aged guys in red Ferraris (or Corvettes if you are stateside). And all this time, you thought they were choosing the colour. Now you know, its the law.

The nineteen year old girl seems on the surface to be an easy option and if I was a member of the Rolling Stones they would be queuing up at my door, but I’m not, so they’re not. Besides, 19 year olds haven’t lived enough to be interesting, so unless I can cram a 50 year old’s brain into their 19 year old body, I don’t see much point. And if I am honest, the only way I am going to get a hot little 19 year old is to rent one for an hour. I certainly couldn’t afford the care and feeding of one full time and I am a hippy on a budget, so this is out too.

A mental breakdown? Don’t I mainly have them on the internet or as it is otherwise known, a running blog.

This website is my therapy, which I guess makes all of you my shrinks. Every time I ask a question, you just have to say “well, what do you think?” Go on, its easy and I just saved you seven tedious years of university and medical training.

Email me for your certificate or degree from the University of North London (hippy). That and a pound will get you a ride on a bus.

It fucking sucked. Really, it did. I’ll be glad to see the back of it.

Besides iPods, name one good thing about the noughties? Even its nickname is pathetically lame.

The decade started with the Millennium, which was supposed to be the biggest celebration of all time. I spent the night in central London, on the River Thames, broadcasting live to all over the world. Maybe you saw me there, I was in charge of a broadcast tent near Lambeth Bridge, blocking people’s views of the fireworks and River of Fire.

Ha, the River of Fire was the first major disappointment of many in the noughties, a damp squib rather than spectacular and a giant let down for those who braved the cold to witness it. I’ve never heard such a loud, collective, “is that really it?” in my life.

London crowds can be drunken and angry and the night of the Millennium was no exception. As the clock struck midnight and I was transmitting live on behalf of four different foreign broadcasters, someone unplugged our generator cable and everything went dark.  

Don’t worry, one of the technicians managed to get it reconnected and it all worked, though the cables were covered with human urine, which wasn’t so pleasant for the engineer. On top of that, the crowd attacked us and tried to steal our expensive TV gear. I can remember smacking peoples’ arms and hands away from tripods and lights as the fireworks began.

We were all ready for the Y2K bug, a peculiar glitch in some older computers that prevented it for handling 4-digit years, meaning some unpatched computers would think it was 1900, not the year 2000. We expected the telephone network to collapse, the power grid to crash, along with all the jumbo jets flying overhead.

It didn’t happen, nothing happened, crisis averted.

But that didn’t mean the noughties were crisis free, because less than a year later, George W. (for What the fuck?) Bush stole the election and became the most powerful sub-normally intelligent person in history. His presidency dominated the decade and his policies made the world a much shittier place.

Think for a second, if Al Gore had claimed the presidency instead. He should have won it, he did win it, but the Supreme Court had other ideas.

Do you think we’d be in Iraq if Gore had two terms in the White House? Probably not, but then we most likely wouldn’t have Barack Obama now.

Who’s to say?

The Bush presidency was built on the foundation of the Neo-Conservative moment and the Project for a New American Century. How’d all that turn out?

Let’s see, the entire economy melted down to near collapse and we seem to be engaged in George Orwell’s never-ending war while his Big Brother keeps track of our every thought and action.

Cool.

Bush was stupid, his advisors no smarter. They dug one stupid hole after another, each a little deeper than the last.

When the attacks of 11th September 2001 took place, you couldn’t imagine a worse commander and chief to have at the helm, unless you enjoy children’s books about pet goats, in which case he would be your number one choice.

9/11 changed everything, but the real shock and awe was how we felt as we watched the twin towers come crashing to the ground.

I’m old enough to remember when the World Trade Centre was built. I’d been lucky enough to visit the observation deck more than once, its a view you wouldn’t be able to duplicate again today without a helicopter.

We were devastated by those attacks, fiendishly simple, yet executed to maximum effect. I remember thinking that this was the beginning of the end of western civilisation and soon we would all be crawling through nothing but rubble, drinking brackish water from puddles in the streets.

How wrong I was!

9/11 was a blip, a lucky shot, a once in a lifetime terror strike from a group whose success exceeded even their own expectations. I’m sure they didn’t think the entire world would change so radically as a result of their actions, but change it did.

Keeping us secure became the number one priority, the cost being a dramatic reduction in our liberty and personal freedoms. Any extreme, radical action taken by a government could and would be justified by tagging it with an anti-terror bent.

Do you want to monitor all telephone calls and email messages? No problem.

Do you need my banking and credit history before I get on a plane? Sure thing!

How about my shoes, should I take them off too? Gosh, hope I don’t have holes in my socks!

Think how quickly we all simply adapted to these new realities, we made hardly a peep as our civil liberties were systematically stripped away.

Its become such a farce now, here in London you practically can’t even take a photograph in a public place without the police swooping down on you like you’re Mohammed Atta, scoping out another attack.

Think that’s good for business and tourism? Think again?

Terror is not the only thing that’s been scaring us in the last ten years, as the environment’s been on our minds too. You won’t see any government declaring war on climate change, even though its probably more of a threat to more people than terrorism could ever be.

The effects of climate change are apparent to anyone who can be bothered to look, yet there are people out there in the world who try to deny this inevitability. If you tried to deny the threat of terror, you would be labelled a traitor, but being a climate-change doubter will not earn you the same label.

Its probably too late to slow down climate change because we pissed away the last decade arguing about it. It would be funny, if it weren’t so damn tragic as the recent Copenhagen Climate Summit heartily illustrated.

The wars in the last ten years have been quite tragic too, especially the two major conflicts instigated by the West, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The war in Iraq was justified with false pretences and blatant, pre-meditated lies. I knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and I had no access to any of the intelligence available to our leaders. They knew it too, but made up a bunch of nonsense any way.

I can remember being the only idiot in the world who thought that America and Britain wouldn’t go to war in Iraq. I genuinely believed they had no grounds to initiate a conflict and that they would back down at the last minute. I don’t think I’ve ever been more wrong, but not as wrong as launching that illegal and pointless war.

George W (for War Criminal) Bush and Tony Blair should both be sitting in prison cells in The Hague, awaiting their trials for crimes against humanity, but no one has the fucking balls to send them both there. The International Court should have charged them already, even if extradition would never happen. They both should pay for their crimes and sins.

But they won’t.

How many innocent lives have been lost in that pointless war? Iraq was far from perfect before the “allies” invaded, but the electricity flowed, the streets were safe and Iraq still had an educated, functional middle class.

I’m not a Saddam Hussein apologist, the guy was a nasty piece of work, repressive, iron fisted, unpleasant and vicious. But so what? Lots of countries are lead by shitbags, we don’t invade them and impose regime change just because we feel like it.

Regime change on its own is not a valid reason for war. In the case of Iraq, it turns out it was the only reason.

Saddam Hussein got strung up in a hastily organised hanging. There’s mobile phone video of it on the internet, that I’m sure you’ve seen by now. It was a very undignified end for an odious, horrible man. Though back in the 1970s, Saddam was friendly with America and funded by them, because he opposed Iran.

Things change, shit happens.

Afghanistan is a different shade of grey.

After 9/11, there was some sense in going into Afghanistan since that’s where the terror bases and training camps were. That’s also where the leader of the bad guys lived, oh what’s his name again?

Osama something or other.

They had the chance to capture or kill him in Tora Bora and blew it. He’s still allegedly alive and on the run in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The problem with Afghanistan is after they chased Al Qaeda out, they were left fighting the Taliban. Big countries like America are crappy at fighting insurgencies and guerrilla wars, see Vietnam for proof. They’ve been dragged deeper into a civil conflict than they need to be.

Today, Afghanistan is a lawless basket-case of a nation, with a corrupt, ineffectual government at its centre and powerful war lords scattered throughout the country.

President Obama seems to think more troops will help and the decade is ending with him announcing further deployments.

When will they ever learn?

How’s never sound?

And speaking of America’s first black president, Barack Obama is one of the good things to come out of the noughties, but he wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for George W. (Where’d he go?) Bush. Bush paved the way for Obama, with his stupidity, mistakes and far right ideals.

Whether you agree with Obama’s policies or not, having a mixed race president in America is good for the entire world. I never thought I would see it in my lifetime, and like most people I was moved deeply by his election.

Do I think he’s doing a good job? Its way too early to tell. He hasn’t even been in office for an entire year yet. We should give the guy a chance. Ask me again in 3–7 years, when he’s finished and I’ll have enough information to form an opinion. Clearly, I wasn’t a voting member of the Nobel panel, because I never would have given the prize to Barack, at least not yet, anyway.

Personally, it wasn’t such a hot decade for me either. Both of my parents passed away, my father in 2004 and my mother in 2008. I miss them both every day.

This was the decade I well and truly entered middle age. I’m going to be forty-fucking-seven next month. The last decade saw me diagnosed with a stupid illness and I had a sustained period of unemployment while I was between jobs.

The illness, Hashimoto’s Disease, is allegedly under control and I did manage to secure gainful employment, for which I am very thankful, but neither period was particularly pleasant for me.

The progress of technology is one good thing to come from the last decade, I’ve got the some of the coolest toys I’ve ever owned currently in my possession.

I’m on my 3rd iMac, the latest a 27” beast with a quad-core processor that is lightening fast, its like having a stylish supercomputer parked on my desk.

By far, the most amazing thing I own is my iPhone 3GS, it is a gadget of unrivalled beauty, power and usefulness. If I had to choose one piece of kit that’s revolutionised my life, its my iPhone. It does more than I could have ever imagined and its abilities just keep growing with every app I install.

Citizen journalism came of age in the noughties, with websites similar to this one springing up at a rapid rate. The word “blog” didn’t even exist ten years ago and now there are millions of them.

Blogging came along when I needed it most, I started this one nearly 6 years ago during my dark and depressing period of unemployment.

Blogging gave me something to do, something to focus on, something to make me feel like I was still a functioning member of society. I had a way to contribute, a way to participate. Somehow, I still mattered, even if I felt like I didn’t.

Blogging may have saved my life. I would have continued to sink deeper had I not discovered Blogspot back in 2004. 

And that’s where you all come in.

Without an audience, blogging is a bit pointless and while I am still not and will probably never be mainstream, I’ve had a level of support and interest that still astounds me. I’m thankful for every visitor I’ve ever had who has dropped by and hung out with me virtually.

Without all of you, I’d just be some guy writing longwinded essays for my own amusement. Ok, even with you all around, that statement is true, but its still better for having you all here.

Thanks very much for stopping by, you’ll always find a warm welcome here and I always put out on the first date.

I wish each and every one of you the very best of the holiday season. I hope the next decade sees all your hopes and dreams come true.

PS
I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff I left out of my review of the decade, but this short video review from Newsweek Magazine should fill in many of the gaps. Its quite US-centric, but its only 7 minutes long, so enjoy!

That’s what other people’s excuses and apologies sound like to my jaded ears. Just so much noise and hot air.

I’ll spare you mine. I don’t actually have any. I just haven’t bothered to post anything here.

Call me crap-ass if you like. Mr. Crapass. Crappenstein. Crapfuckingtastic.

Just don’t ever call me late for dinner. You can ask your grandparents where that one comes from because its older than they are.

Its not that I don’t come up with great ideas for things to write about every day, because I do. Coming up with this shit’s not hard, sitting down and doing it is.

I always seem to have something else to distract me away from doing something semi-productive and nearly useful, like writing one of my patented hippy things. Ok, I haven’t actually patented them, because someone already beat me to it and got the patent on crap.

I’d rather be day dreaming. I’d rather watch tv, or read or pass out in a drug induced stupor.

Alright, truth be told, its been years since I’ve been in any sort of stupor because I don’t do those naughty drugs any more. I don’t even drink and trust me, if you’re aiming for a stupor, booze is most definitely your bestest buddy.

The only reason I’m gracing you with my presence now is that I popped onto my own website and noticed how long it had been since I bothered to post anything and I thought, “fuck man everybody gonna think I be dead or some shit like that”.

Yes, I my inner voice sounds like that, doesn’t yours?

So here I am, after a nightshift and a couple of spliffies, spewing utter rubbish just for the sake of having something semi-current on the top of my home page. Do people even call them homepages any more?

Maybe I’m just losing touch. I genuinely had to look up some words in the Urban Dictionary that the kids are using these days, because I didn’t fucking understand them.

Maybe I am your grandpa.

Oh yeah, we’re approaching my birthday, its only a couple of months away. Is it too early for me to start my annual moan about ageing and middle age and dying and death and yada yada yada?

Apparently not.

I was going to write something about zombies the other day. I can sum it up for you. I saw Zombieland. I liked Zombieland. I like Zombies. Zombies scare the beejeezus outta me because they are dead, right, but like they’re walking around and you know, they want to eat your brains, only you can’t kill ‘em, um…because like they’re already dead?

Ok, that’s not really my review of Zombieland, though I did see it and I did like it, but that was an actual review I overheard on the street. I might have made up the beejeezus part for comic effect, but the rest is pretty much word for word what I overheard.

I was going to stretch all that out to 1000 words. You don’t have to thank me for sparing you that zombified opus, just send cash or provide sexual favours to me and all my friends.

How cool would that be if random strangers from the internet offered to shag my friends, just because I asked them too. I’d be the most popular guy around. You’d want to be my friend too. I can sort you out with random hook-ups, no charge.

Wait a second, if I have random strangers willing to sleep with people I know, I’d be a fool not to charge something. How about a handling fee? That sounds fair. Shall we call it £200 quid for the hour, you can talk extras directly with your internet date upon arrival.

You see, this is how people suddenly become pimps. One minute, your just typing some crap on the internet, the next you’re running a stable of pros.

Snoop Dogg’s life suddenly makes a lot more sense to me now.

This is that something, or rather it will be when I finish it.

I’ve only just started and I don’t know where this is going, so how will I know when its finished?

I’m still not feeling 100%, so this could turn into a hippy health bulletin. There’s a little bit to report.

After countless treatments with my chiropractor, my back is now 99.9% pain free. I’m sleeping well and moving well.

I’m still feeling listless and occasionally a bit breathless, but I saw an endocrinologist this week who explained why and made a recommendation that should help.

With thyroid problems, like my Hashimoto’s Disease, your blood is tested for two things, your T4 levels, which is the actual thyroid hormone and your TSH, which is Thyroid Stimulating Hormone and made by your pituitary gland.

While my T4 level was good, my TSH level is still on the high side and should be lower. Lowering it involves increasing my dose of medication again and another blood test in a month or so. I’m going to go see my GP next week to sort all that out and hopefully I’l be feeling some benefits in a couple of weeks.

That wasn’t much of an update, was it?

How about an update on my site?

If you haven’t noticed, even when I’m not putting new posts up here, I am still adding quality content…well quality if you are interested in my musical tastes or what I had for breakfast. I’m talking about my Last FM playlist and my most recent Tweets.

The Last FM widget on the right, shows you the last handful of songs I’ve listened to from my home media centre, my iMac and my iPhone. It also tells you when I was listening, so you can keep up with it in real time. I don’t know why you would want to, but you can if you like.

I’m still enjoying Twitter and I do tweet a fair amount daily, often at weird times, like the middle of the night or early morning. I’m sometimes around during the day and at night, it depends on my weird schedule. I tweet all sort of random crap, from interesting links to odd and surreal jokes.

Today, just for fun, I started using a hashtag for a virtual Glastonbury festival online — #virtualglasto — for people like me who will watch from my sofa, shielded from the elements and poorly cooked veggie burgers. I’m actually looking forward to Springsteen on Saturday night and I hope the BBC don’t fuck me over and only show a couple of songs. We want the whole goddamn set, goddamn it!

Mainly, I’m posting today because I’ve been getting so many new visitors. I’ve had another significant rise.

This is to let all you new visitors know that I’m alive and well and living in north London, just like always. Keep bookmarking me or grabbing the RSS feed and before you know it, I’ll post something amazing that will inform, entertain and amuse.

Just not today.

I think I’m finished now.

I haven’t been so well for the last couple of weeks. Hey ho.

I’m waiting for the results of another blood test, that I had been putting off, but a few days ago, I had a couple of litres sucked out of my arm.

Ok, it seemed like litres, I didn’t look. I don’t like blood, especially my own if its not deep inside my veins.

The reason I’ve been putting it off is because my regular GP of nearly a dozen years is now on long-term sick leave and getting a blood test meant seeing a brand new doctor.

The new doctor and I didn’t get off to a great start. He took my blood pressure using some fancy automated gizmo and when he checked the reading, the expression on his face told me it wasn’t good.

My mother suffered from high blood pressure, took medication for it and was monitored regularly. With that in mind, I’ve always kept a close eye on mine, and thankfully it has consistently been low, 110/70 which for an oversized, middled-aged smoker is pretty damn good.

The electronic gizmo was showing 170/110, which is not good. Its about as far from good as you can be, its “call an ambulance now” good.

I was incredulous of this reading straight away and told him I’m consistently 110/70, young doctor new guy looked like he going to shit himself. I asked him to take it again with an old style, manual sphygmomanometer.

He had to go find one and I was momentarily left alone, my mind racing to the obvious, yet slim possibility that something changed with my blood pressure.

It could explain why I was feeling so shitty again.

The new doctor guy returned with an old-school blood pressure cuff, quickly wrapped it around my arm then pumped the squeezey ball for all he was worth. As he let the air out and took the reading, his concerned expression relaxed into a very slight grin and I knew it was fine.

And that’s all he said, “its fine”. He didn’t even share the correct, final score with me and I think I know why.

It was 110/70, just like I told him it should and would be.

Doctors don’t like it when you know more than they do, even if it is something as personal as your own damn blood pressure. Especially, younger, inexperienced and insecure doctors, like this one, who I unintentionally put on his back foot.

It would have been easier if he just got it right the first time, but that’s true of just about everything anyone gets wrong, ever.

I told him I had Hashimoto’s and needed to get my thyroid levels checked, though I said “T4 levels” just to be snarky and this time it was intentional. To be fair, this was right after he told me smoking cigarettes was bad for me, like he was the first person to share that particular pearl of wisdom.

“Well, gee whillikers, doc, they’re bad for you? I did not know that. Next you’re gonna tell me unprotected anal sex with crack whores is bad for me! I did not know that, either.”

He asked me what my symptoms were and I told him: breathlessness, like trying to catch your breath on a cold day without any exertion, very occasional, but noticeable heart palpitations, alternating sweats and chills, a big lack of energy and worst of all, my back problems have returned.

When I mentioned my back problem, he looked at me quizzically and I had to explain to him how I was suffering from inflammation in the joints of my spine, which were lighting up nerves in my leg, sciatic really. I had to go to explain that one of the symptoms of Hashimoto’s is inflamed joints as attributed by my regular GP last summer.

All of this started last summer when my back gave out and for around a fortnight I could barely walk. I got over it and haven’t had any real back problems since, just the occasional, isolated twinge, but nothing of any concern.

Until about 2 weeks ago, when I started getting severe pain shooting down my right leg, mainly in bed and bad enough to wake me up. I haven’t really slept more than 3 continuous hours since then, though often I wake up, put an ice pack on my back, or take a horrible codeine pill or both, and go back to sleep.

I saw my chiropractor three times last week, which improved it slightly. Since then, I’ve worked a couple of nights and its become bad again. Sitting in a shitty office chair for 12 hours will do that to you.

And because of the bank holiday weekend, I can’t see my chiropractor again until Tuesday, which is also bad.

Moan, moan, moan, I’m just a big hippy baby.

I left the doctor’s office with a blood test form, with more boxes checked than I ever thought possible, hence the litres of blood extracted. He’s running every test imaginable, which is cool, but he did it out of fear, not because he thought there was anything particularly wrong with me.

He didn’t really answer my question about the possibility of my thyroid levels dropping again, requiring an increase in my daily dose of levothyroxine. I don’t think he knew the answer. I don’t know either, but right now, its my best and only guess.

I was told by my regular (and much missed) GP, that once my dosage was adjusted properly, I would “feel like a new person”. That hasn’t happened yet and I’ve reached the point where I don’t think I ever will.

Yep, all of this has me down. I am bored with having health problems, its tedious always being asked with deep concern “how are you? no really, how are you?” I know people mean it and its not that I don’t appreciate their concern, I just don’t like having to answer it over and over again.

Mainly I’m bored with feeling like shit all the time. Its making me think all sorts of things, like: this is my life now, my best days are behind me, I’ve achieved nothing with my life.

All sorts of uplifting shit, really!

Just check out the title of this post, “Running out the clock”. That’s kind of a downer, isn’t it? Now that you know the context.

That’s how I feel right now, like I am just running out the clock, on those last few decades/years/months/days/hours/minutes/seconds (delete as appropriate) that I have left.

It doesn’t matter if its true, I mean of course its true, its true for everyone, but what matters I guess is that its how I feel right now. And I don’t feel like I have decades or years.

I should point out I have no medical evidence to suggest I am going to die any time soon and in actual fact, rationally I don’t believe I am going to die any time soon. I’m still talking about how I feel.

Emotionally.

Now, this is the part where I’m supposed to remind you (and myself) that I’ve always been a survivor and blah blah, I’ve come through this and I’ve come through that, but again that’s not how I feel.

I feel like I haven’t got any fight left in me, but that’s probably just the Hashimoto’s talking. I really do feel like my energy is zapped most of the time and doing the simplest things takes tremendous amounts of effort.

With that in mind, think how daunting anything complex must seem to me at the moment, like negotiating my way through the NHS to a better diagnosis and treatment.

Either I need a simple adjustment to my thyroid meds or something else is wrong. I can just about cope with another increase in my dosage and the additional tests required, but anything more than that and I don’t think I can be bothered.

Happy days.

I liked it better when I was the king of fun, but if I am going to get nostalgic, I might as well lament over how much I miss my beloved fresh and legal magic mushrooms and I still curse the government for banning them.

What’s the connection? Right now, I would really benefit from a decent, old fashioned shroom trip. An afternoon shroomed to the gills would do more for me than 10 years of psychotherapy ever could. And it would be cheaper, too.

I do now.

I’ve probably had this stupid disease for a while, longer than I’ve known. I had symptoms that I didn’t know were symptoms for at least a year prior to being told of the cause.

I just thought I was getting old.

I am getting old, but age was not causing my problems, my useless thyroid was…and is.

I’m still not well. I find myself saying that a lot lately, in response to people asking me why I look tired, or pale.

I’ve been undergoing treatment for Hashimoto’s since my diagnosis. Treatment comes in the form of a small pill taken daily to replace the thyroid hormone my body no longer manufactures.

The side effects caused by the pills are very similar to the symptoms of the disease. I get heart palpitations, breathlessness, headaches, dizziness, light-headedness and these get worse every time the dosage is raised.

The dosage gets raised every couple of months as I am still not on a therapeutically effective level yet. I started out on 25mg, then went to 50mg and now I am on 100mg of Levothyroxine. Its about to be raised again, probably to 150mg, though I am awaiting for the results of a blood test for confirmation.

Lately, extreme exhaustion and lethargy have been added to the mix. I constantly crave sleep, but I don’t sleep deeply or for very long. I get physically tired very easily and don’t have any of my usual stamina.

My normal walk to my local highstreet used to take me well under 10 minutes, it now takes me closer to 15 and the return journey is stretching to the 20 minute mark.

I’m having concentration problems too. “Brain fog” is another symptom and there’s a real pea-souper in my head most of the time. I find it difficult paying attention to people when they tell me anything complex, my mind wanders and I am easily distracted. The same is true of my reading comprehension, if a paragraph drags on too long, as this one seems to be doing, I forget what it says.

I get waves of nausea, my appetite vacillates between having none at all, to suddenly being ravenous and I’ve been having mood swings too.

All of this sucks the big one in a very real, demonstrable way and I am tired of it.

To complicate matters, I haven’t been having much fun with the NHS.

My GP referred me to a specialist and after waiting months for an appointment, I ended up leaving the clinic without seeing the consultant endocrinologist. The clinic was oversubscribed, there weren’t any seats in the waiting room, the nurses were surly and rude and after waiting way too long, I left.

I did receive a letter of apology from the consultant for my poor treatment, but that is a small consolation. The entire experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth and no desire to ever return to that clinic.

It gets even worse, my regular GP, who I have been seeing for nearly a dozen years has been having health problems of his own. He’s cut back his hours and for the last several weeks, I’ve been unable to see him. I finally gave up and saw the surgery’s senior partner.

The senior partner immediately said she would take over managing my care, which makes me think my regular doctor won’t be back full time any time soon.

Being sick seems to be hard work and I worry if I ever had something seriously big wrong with me that I wouldn’t have the patience to fight my way through the system to get the treatment I would need to survive.

And speaking of survival, people can and do die from Hashimoto’s Disease. One of the things it does to you is weaken your heart and one can suffer from heart failure. I’m not saying that’s what I am heading for, but quite often it does feel that way to me.

I’m told that once I am on an effective dose of medication, I’ll feel like a brand new person. I’ve heard that a lot for the last six months. I’d be happy if I could just feel like the old person I used to be, before I was diagnosed and on this stupid medication.

The exhaustion caught up to me this week and prevented me from getting to work. I’ve been living on adrenalin and my supply must have finally depleted, I sort of collapsed the other night. I’m now signed off work for a week to rest.

I feel like this is my life now and I’ll never feel like my old self again. I know I’m an impatient patient, but I just can’t see a path back to good health. Let’s hope my doctor’s vision is clearer than my own.