People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do - Isaac Asminov

    It's going on three months since my last post. Three months of stuff to do with writing, and many a game of Solitare to put off doing things like this blog. The big thing in my life is that I've published Ellydd Gate online, both as a hardcopy paperback and as an ebook for all sorts of devices. Check it out on my writer's page at www.dannyfurlong.com. 
    Publishing it wasn't simple. There was a cover to design and have made by someone proficient in Photoshop, ISBNs to learn about and purchase, book proofs to check, and a seemingly endless number of corrections of things that I'd forgotten to do - like forgetting to credit my editor on the frontspiece of the book.
   The even bigger thing in my life is that concurrent with publishing Ellydd Gate I did the same with my autobiography, Flipside. It too is online as a hardcopy paperback and as an ebook. Check it out also at www.dannyfurlong.com.
    I wrote it and got it ready for publishing about ten years ago. I've been adding bits to it on and off for the last twelve months. Seeing I had to do all that stuff getting Ellydd Gate online it wasn't all that much more trouble to get Flipside online at the same time.
    And once I'd put those two books out there I had Gemma quite sensibly hassling me to market them. This is a problem for me and many an author. Writing is our thing. We begrudge having to spend time marketing our books, trying to get them to sell. I know I'm not doing anywhere near enough work in that area. I put it off and put it off, but every now and then I make a token effort.     One afternoon I put together a publicity letter for newspapers. It begins with 'Hi. I’m Danny Furlong. I’m hoping for publicity for two books I’ve recently published onlie. My somewhat unordinary circumstances would make for an interesting article, so I’m also hoping you will see this as a win/win situation.' After that introduction I actually write the article, in the third person about Danny Furlong past and present -  so that the paper can lift all or parts of it. I figure the easier I made it for them the more likely are they to do it.
    I sent it to our local paper and they did a small article. I sent it to the Bendigo Advertiser (Bendigo - the closest big town, population 60,000) They sent a reporter with a photographer to see me and ran a double-page feature article. An article that ended with my web address printed wrongly. Luckily they added the Amazon web address for my books. A big feature article sounds good, but all that resulted from it was one paperback sale and a few ebooks.
    I've only sent it to two papers so far. Now that I'm talking about it I'll try another paper or two this weekend. Maybe a city paper.
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Granny Thomas Gully, Campbells Creek, Victoria. 1987.
     Since early this century our town, just like most towns, has had the right attitude about its frailer elderly residents - out of sight, out of mind. The Castlemaine home and hospital was built right on the extreme edge of the town's only industrial area. Its closest neighbours are a large factory, a sprawling woollen mill, a less-than-pleasant bacon factory and the stinking abattoirs. It's perched at the very top of a piton-and-safety-rope hill about two kilometres from the town centre, so even if its aged prisoners knew how to absail they could never make the round trip to the shops. After all, Councillors wouldn't allow themselves to suffer the indignities of age and infirmity - or would they? God, I hope so.
     I attended the day hospital section specifically for rehabilitation therapies, but I got very little more in a whole week here than in any one weekday at PHH (which hadn't been all that much, anyway). I was getting nowhere very slowly so after three or four months I called it quits. I'd realized very early on that they were just giving me maintenance physio instead of putting in the time required to get me up and running again. Most of my time at the hospital was spent sitting and waiting or having lunch. I knew my days were being totally wasted, but I had one important reason for attending. It meant that I was away from home for most of the day three times a week and so Rainbow had some time to be by herself or to visit friends.
     I placed an advertisement in the local paper asking for volunteers to help me exercise at home. About fifteen people offered their services, so we organized a five-days-a-week roster whereby they each came for a separate half-day session with me about once a fortnight. Naturally they were all novices at physiotherapy, so I paid for two sessions with the new local private physio. Luckily, she had only recently gone into private practice after having been a physio at the home and hospital. We had worked together for over a month, so when I took my volunteers to her for the two-session crash course she knew exactly which exercises were appropriate for me. Physio exercises are repeated time and again, so my helpers soon became confident and combatant. The quality of my physio dropped to about eighty five percent, but the quantity jumped by eight hundred and fifty percent.
     Oops - I'm a few months ahead of myself. Rainbow and I went to a fairly quiet new year's eve party to herald in nineteen eighty five. We went to three or four parties before we moved to Melbourne in June of that year and they were all equally as much fun for me. I was never the life of any party even before my stroke, except for a few memorable drunken, stoned or sex-crazed occasions. Usually my idea of a good time at parties was to sit quietly in a corner to soak up the atmosphere and the music and to share a few joints with one or two good friends. In my younger days I'd often collar onto some stray skirt during the night, but of course I never even flirted mildly after I'd met Rainbow (???).

`And to share a few joints with one or two good friends'. How often in my lifetime has that happened to me at parties? Two, three times? The smell of dope has a strange effect on the few creepy ex-hippy guys that turn up at every party after the pubs shut. They can detect the smell from two smoke-filled rooms away and they hunt out the joint with the single-mindedness of a missionary seeking out natives to save. Sometimes just one of the creepy ex-hippies would sidle up to me and my mates - sometimes six.
     ‘Is that a joint, Dan old pal? We'll help you smoke it.’
    After my stroke things were different. I couldn't just sit unobtrusively in a corner somewhere, because a wheelchair is obtrusive. It doesn't merge into the background. It shouts: ‘Here I am! Danny's sitting in me! Remember Danny? He used to be your friend once. Of course, the stupid bastard had a stroke, which put him in hospital for nine months. Nine months in which you couldn't be bothered even sending him a card. Act as if you're still his friends and come and talk to him.’
     Maybe I'm not very nice, because I'd be happy to never see all those self-centred mongrels ever again. I didn't even want to go to the few parties we went to, but I had to make a bit of an effort for Rainbow's sake.
     The Etran board caused many problems. Although it's very simple for an initiate to use it does require practice, so for a novice it can be difficult. The difficulty isn't in recognizing each letter as I gaze at it, but in remembering those letters long enough to form words and then sentences. Most novices are so on edge that they concentrate so hard on guessing the letters that after a few words have been spelled they forget a word or two. The simple sentence ‘Wouldn't a beer be good?’ becomes ‘Would a beer be good?’ or, even worse ‘A beer wouldn't be good.’
     I'd spend ages getting someone to become comfortable with using the board then I wouldn't meet them again for months and so they'd be on tenterhooks once more - back to square one.
     For people to talk to me at parties would most often mean them holding one-sided conversations which wouldn't last long, because the pressure to fill in the frequent awkward silences would soon make them crack and find an excuse to leave me. Many people see my board as some sort of intelligence test and they often feel they're failing dismally, so they lunge at any reason to escape and to avoid any subsequent conversations with me. I don't look forward to most party chat because of the excessive effort and dissatisfaction involved on both sided, so I often subconsciously put on a stern, uncommunicative face which scares people off me.
     Have you ever been to a party where there hasn't been a party bore? Have you noticed how everyone that Bore buttonholes slides away at the first opportunity? This is normally his fate at every party, but just once in his lifetime God sees fit to give him a captive audience which surpasses his wildest dreams - me. What could be better for him than having a mute quad to bore? I couldn't interrupt with sarcastic or derogatory remarks and I couldn't escape. There's no way anyone else at the party would save me because as long as Bore had me he wouldn't annoy them.
     You're beginning to see why I didn't enjoy parties much. Add the following to those things.
     ‘Do you want a drink, Danny?’
     ‘Cant swallow thin liquids without choking.’
     ‘Have some nuts them.’
     ‘Cant chew - Ill choke.’
     ‘Try a sausage roll. The sauce will make it soggy.’
     ‘Vegetarian ten yrs.’
     I couldn't eat or drink; I couldn't have conversations or chat up women; I couldn’t the drawback to smoke dope; I couldn't mingle or dance; but I could sit - and sit - and sit.
     Before my stroke I was heavily into marijuana. Now I can no longer control my diaphragm to hold smoke in my lungs - the few times I've tried dope recently it hasn't been in my lungs long enough to enter my bloodstream, so it's been ineffective. I used to be addicted to it.
     ‘But grass isn't addictive’ all the outraged heads amongst you readers are protesting.
     Boy - have I got news for you. Before my stroke I rarely smoked on weekdays before about five or six in the afternoon, but by then I'd be hanging out for a J. If for some reason I had to go a whole day without dope my head would ache and my stomach would feel awful. Dope mightn't be physically addictive, but it sure grabs you psychologically. Maybe it doesn't get you if you're just a social smoker. I grew a lot - for personal use only, so I smoked nearly every day of the year for a few years.
     No reason was ever found for my stroke, but it wasn't caused by dope. Hard drugs like heroin and crack do that. Soft drugs like grass and Valium don't. I should have suffered withdrawals in ICU, but my very abrupt halt with grass was more than compensated for with the morphine that I was being administered. I was given morph for a week or two to block out the psychological traumas brought about by my stroke. It MAY have done that, but it gave me some very disturbing hallucinations/dreams as well. Whenever I'm around people who are smoking dope nowadays I get a slight nostalgic yearning which I rarely try to satisfy, because my new coughing and choking for so little result just isn't worthwhile.
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June 1, 1977 - Todra high-plains, Morocco
     The Kombi's parked beside a smallish stone-fenced paddock, not a square paddock, a near-round paddock that's packed with parked donkeys. We're at a windswept village market, a weekly open-air market (souk). The village is half a day from the Berber tents - half a day for the Kombi, but maybe a week or so for the Berbers' camels.
    This souk replicates souks throughout Morocco. There are vegetables and herbs and used cloaks, jilubas and dresses in small piles on the ground. There are tethered goats and sheep for sale; tiny tented stalls of this `n that - carpets, new cloaks and jilubas, aluminium tea sets, and other stuff; two barbers under a tree; hundreds of farmers and villagers, even a few women; and two Westerners - us.
     We buy a few days' food - milled wheat for couscous, a few vegies, bread flat round and freshly-baked - and, would you believe it, we find butter. It's dolloped out onto paper from a tin under a counter. Bit dicey that, but we never see butter. I haggle for a second-hand cloak for the ever-present wind and I get it not too cheap. I get it not too cheap and now Rainbow says ‘We'll be in Marakesh tomorrow and into the desert soon after that. You won't need this then.’ She says it now, mind you, not before - she always does that.  
     I see a barber standing sheltered from the wind by a hut, and there's a straight-backed chair for his victims. It's not in the wind either. My hair blows in my eyes too much up here, so it's a haircut for me. I sit in the chair and I'm having second thoughts now I'm here. All Moroccan men have neat hair and I'm yet to see one with long hair. This barber's got short back-and-sides just like barbers back home in the Forties, and I'm offering up my shoulder-length hair on trust? No way, Hose'. I hastily mime a beard-trim and ‘don't touch the hair’ displays.
     Rainbow's at a tree waiting, no wind that side. An old man's watching her watching the barber, watching her from three metres away in the wind. He stokes his kif pipe carefully and  approaches her with it held out. They do small things like this for her, because she looks good. They do small things for her smile, for her voice, for her notice, however fleeting - they clear a path for her, dust a seat for her, charge less for her. This one's offering kif to her. Why aren't I good-looking like her? Not that I want the men's attention, but I'd go some of their women, though.
    She smiles the old man her thanks, she sucks on the pipe lightly, cautiously, she pauses, she sucks deeply, confidently, then she turns deathly pale. The top of her head lifts three feet, a metre, more, more. She's coughing, coughing, coughing. She plonks down coughing, dying, coughing, and dying. The old man retrieves his pipe from her hand and fades away, judiciously. Half an hour she's white, getting less deathly slowly.
     And me? I've got a neatly trimmed beard, hair ever so lightly trimmed, I'm wrapped warm in my cloak, and I'm glad she's the attractive one.

    The heat of battle is as sweet as the victory - Bob Marley

    I'm absolutely not interested in writing this post today. It's five pm. I've spent the entire day emailing carers back and forth trying to find a way out of the impending crisis. As I've probably said before the Bartay service provider took over providing my carers about five weeks ago. They thought it would be a walk in the park, but I knew we were in for trouble unless they accepted my help and active participation. Unfortunately the public face of Bartay turned out to be a control freak. Every move of mine to help with carers encountered very hostile rejection.
    My case manager had origonally recommended Bartay, but after just one disasterous week she suggested I look into self management of my carers - immediately. I did, but the wheels of burocracy (?) turn slowly. By the time I got the go-ahead Bartay had written to me that it was all too hard and giving me the required one month's notice that they were going to withdraw service.   
    My two experienced carers wanted to stay with me, so I needed just three more. I advertised for carers and was deluged with applicants. I interviewed the six most upbeat, positive-sounding of them and hired three. We spent the last ten days training them as much as possible with just the two experienced carers to train them during their limited number of shifts. We still have some training to do. We will get it done in time, but that means training until the very last shift before Bartay pulls the plug. Only seven days to go, but we will make it.
    Then this morning I received the following email from one of the new carers ...
'I have been thinking a lot about working with you. I do feel at the moment I am not qualified enough to help you to the best of my ability, and I am the sort of person that likes to give my best in all situations. Alongside this Andrew also got a job and I have been factoring this into the equation. He will be working late shifts Mon-Fri and some overtime at weekends. This also means I cannot give you the time I could before as I have no one to look after my kids on a tea and bed shifts. Therefore, I believe at this time it would not be fair to you to keep on. This has been a hard decision because I like you a lot ...'
    I've been working all day to try to find a way out of this mess. It's going to be an interesting week.

  … … … … … … … … …
Luckily I prepared the rest of this post days ago ...
December 13, 1986 - Campbells Creek, just outside Castlemaine, Victoria
Today is exactly two years since I left BHHA and came home to live.  Rainbow drove me home to Campbell’s Creek nine months and one day after I was taken by ambulance to Maroondah Hospital. I could no longer walk or talk, chew food to extract the flavour or drink liquids without choking. I couldn't easily join any conversations, chastise or protect my kids, make proper love to Rainbow, and a thousand other things. Hell, I couldn't even wipe my own bum!

Rainbow visited me nearly every day I was in hospital, every weekday anyway. She geared her whole life and our kids' lives around these visits, as she knew how important they were to me. I desperately needed her emotional support and I relied heavily on her to act as a go-between when I had any detailed communications for the staff. I often felt guilty because I'd get her to do much of my dirty work, but I had no choice. Usually she was the only one around who could use the Etran board fluently enough to decipher my involved messages - unfortunately they were messages of complaint to the nurses more often than not.

In a way she had a more difficult time than I did. I only had relatively minor worries about me and my life in hospital to contend with, and my every bodily need was catered for by hordes of nubile young nurses. She had the real worries to cope with, like the worry of raising our two small children without my help. To be within commuting distance of Prince Henry's hospital she'd moved in with my retired mother, so there was the worry of the standard mess our kids would make of her mother-in-law's `clean-as-a-pin' suburban house. She had the worry of having a hospitalized quadriplegic for a husband and the nagging worry that he just mightn’t be the full quid any more.

Because of my stuffed-up emotions I couldn't show her much of my love or appreciation of her. Whenever I spelled out a simple ‘thanks’ or ‘I love you’ to her I'd be swamped with tears of emotion before I was halfway through. Tears that'd grow into anguished sobs as I flashed on my future, our future, and her future with me. So I learned to avoid telling her how valuable she was to me. I did this to lessen the trauma on my own emotions, but she was also going through the worst period of our lives and had a real need for the emotional support which I couldn't lend. For months she suffered my extreme and sudden swings between laughter and sobs then more guffaws, and she had to live with the disconcerting thought that just maybe her future was tied up with an oddball.

I deliberately put a lot of effort into good personal relationships with the nursing staff at both PHH and BHHA to ensure good and better and best care. Rainbow will probably read that and say, ‘Why didn't you put more effort into our relationship, Dan?’ I guess that if I really try I can talk my way out of that one, but on this rare occasion I'll try to be honest about me. She was already committed to me in her heart and her mind. I was her lover - no, I had been her lover –and I was the father of her children. She had decided to hang in there to help me see this through and I took her for granted. 

I could have acted the whimpering, disgruntled shit and the staff would have still tolerated me. They would have understood that my lousy situation made me this way. Occasionally I'd get so depressed I'd break into violent sobs, but this actually endeared me more to most nurses because I'd soon pull myself together and face the future with a `brave' smile. From early on after my stroke I've continued my lifelong belief that I'm terrific - too terrific to be fazed by that minor setback for long.

I guess I realized that the nurses weren't anywhere near as committed to me as Rainbow was. In some things in my life I haven't been very nice, but I cultivated my `niceness' with many nurses to ensure that I received the best possible nursing care. Sure, my relationship with Rainbow needed my input too, and it didn't get it.

After I left BHHA we lived back home at Granny Thomas Gully, about two kilometres from Campbells Creek. It was summertime and summer in the bush around there is terrific. From a distance a bluish haze could be seen emanating from the trees. A similar blueness gave the Blue Mountains their name. I think I read once it's the blueness of evaporating eucalyptus oil. The Blue Mountains bush looks more vigorous and deeper blue than the `our' sparse bush. I love our bush. Its gum-trees are a dusty olive-green. In summer it rarely rains, so a layer of dust dulls the greenness that glints from the trees after autumn's downpours.

GTG is nineteen acres completely surrounded by state forest about six kilometres from Castlemaine town. Nineteen acres is, um, a fraction over seven and a half hectares. About half of it had been cleared way back in eighteen hundred and fifty nine and had been farmed for nearly a hundred years. When we brought the property it had been derelict for over twenty-five years - its old weatherboard house had disappeared into locals' fireplaces and rapacious coffee bush had covered every cleared area. We'd decided to do more than just build a home there. Actually, I decided this but we both worked towards it in our different ways. I decided that building our home would not only mean building a house, but also creating our own total environment.

I cleared the coffee bush, put in dams, planted and watered and built and worked to realize our dreams. I'd built a good-sized flat-roofed mud brick garage amongst the trees at one edge of GTG. As soon the building inspector approved it I put in dividing walls, wood and gas stoves, gas lights and fridge, shower, toilet, sink and all the trappings of a basis two-bedroom house so we could live comfortably while I built our dream-home.

Dream-home - visions of a new two-story brick veneer with four bedrooms, billiard room and study, tennis court and swimming pool. Not quite. Our dreams were less grandiose and much more adventurous. We planned a two-storey, two-bedroom, mud brick house with barrel-vaulted mud brick roofs over two small rooms, red-gum tree trunk rounded sections set in polished and sealed dried mud for the kitchen floor, built-in indoor lily ponds and much much more. I built ten metres of creeper-covered arched walkway, a bush-log gazebo that supported prolific passionfruit vines, thirty fruit and nut trees and more. Everything was coming together, but then I had my stroke.

Now the whole place had an untended, down-at-heel, feel about it. For the five months that I'd been at PHH GTG had been deserted, but Rainbow had moved back in when I'd transferred to BHHA. She was flat out raising the kids and spending five or six hours every day visiting me as well as all the difficulties that go with living in the bush without electricity. What with all that and all the worry about me and everything she didn't have the time, the energy or the desire to maintain our dying dream.

We'd put in a special little dam for swimming, with a patch of lawn beside it. In summer this watered lawn was the only cooling green grass within a couple of kilometres, so I'd built our shaded gazebo there. There are masses of honeysuckle and passionfruit on two sides of it and overhead and the deep water hole nearby to attract hordes of birds and mosquitoes as evening began to approach. Magpies, kookaburras, sparrows, the occasional ibis or crane and wrens galore. One hot afternoon I counted fourteen different types of wren darting around and splashing in the cool water. There were probably more types, but by fourteen I couldn't tell new from old.

I'd sit in my wheelchair in the gazebo for hours every day with my typewriter on my lap and the garage we lived in about fifty metres behind me. Often I'd just sit and reflect on the half-completed house that I could see just up the hill a bit. It wasn't huge in area, but its 600mm-thick mud brick walls and its solid tree trunk beams screamed its solidness. It had the unseen solidness of reinforced concrete footings that were more than three times as big as normal and very heavy steel girders hidden in each wall so it'd withstand hurricanes or earthquakes. Neither of these have ever occurred around there, nor were they ever likely too, but after just two years or so I could easily make out the beginnings of a problem which could destroy the house much more slowly but just as effectively.

I'd designed and built a flat-roofed house with no eaves - in fact the roof is inside the walls. I'd intended using a modern clear sealer to protect the walls, but alas, I didn't get that done in time. Storms had worn a lot of the surface smoothness off the bricks and gentler rains had further eroded them. I reckoned if they were given a free hand for about a hundred years they'd wash away the entire walls to return to the very soil they came from. I'd wanted my dream home built by my own hand, but as that was now impossible I was attracted to that gradual 'recycling' idea. I wanted to have the roof removed so the rain could have a fair go at each wall from both sides. Rainbow sensibly vetoed that idea.

In time I came to accept the inevitability of all the deterioration. I saw it as just one more loss in a whole litany of things I'd lost since my stroke. I accepted GTG's on-going deterioration, but it hurt - I'd sit in my wheelchair for hour upon hour `reading', but turning pages was so difficult I'd soon leave the book and just gaze around and think. The interrupted mud brick dream on the hillside was being eroded away by the rain; a dead tree had fallen and crushed a section of the arched walkway; fruit trees were dying from thirst (clogged outlets in my automatic watering system); blackberry bushes were re-sprouting; etc etc. No matter which direction I looked there was deterioration, unkemptness, and heartbreak.

My spirit wasn't faring too well out there in the gazebo and the mosquitoes made sure my physical being didn't do much better. During the day in summer the bush around there is hot and parched - in fact you can smell the dryness. You don't come within a bull's roar of a single mossie, but as soon as the sun gets low whole swarms of the little buggers appear out of nowhere.

The gazebo was cool, moist and shady, so it was alive with mossies from about four every afternoon - it became open season on quads then. Three or four mossies would lob on my face or my bare arms and bare legs and I'd struggle with very little success to dislodge them before they attacked me with their miniature drilling rigs. No sooner would one have had her fill and left me than an even bigger one would take her place. (God - why don't mosquitoes use the Pill?) It's said that if you don't scratch mossie bites they won't itch. Pig's Bum! I didn't scratch them because I couldn't, but I still itched like crazy.

After a few weeks I admitted defeat and arranged for Rainbow to wheel me back inside before mossie snack time. For the next six months I was rarely outside late in the afternoon, so I got to know every ripple of our mud brick walls. In the few hours before dinner each night at least a couple of those little marauders would find a way to get into the garage. They'd head straight for me like ants making a beeline (or ant-line) to a picnic. I'd duck and weave until eventually Rainbow saved me.
… … … … … … … … …
October 22, 1976 - Maldon, Victoria
Swirling red, orange, green, blue, purple and more, but mainly red, swirling red. Red when she's turning slow and it's swirling low, but a rainbow of colour when she swirls faster, higher, and the unnoticed wide pleats of her dress part. The ceiling's swirling around above her head, the dance floor's swirling beneath her feet, and she's swirling in loops through the packed dancers with her long dress swirling.

Her eyes and mind are closed, she's oblivious - the music has become her world. It's filled her mind, her heart and her soul. And she's filled it. Her soft face carries her rapture so rapturous. The dancers parting for her swirling loops envy her rapture and they're taken by her. They're lifted and dance freer with her unknowing example.

Her long black hair swirls to the music. Her long red dress swirls to the music. Her rainbow soul swirls to the music.

October 23, 1975 - Campbell’s Creek township, Victoria
I remember years ago when I met Innocent for the first time. That was the same day I got back from the Northwest. Within a week we were together solid. I reckon that's happened again. I got back from the UK last Saturday and I hitchhiked home from the airport. The last ride I got was a friend going home and she talked me to a bush-dance that night. She reckoned I'd get on well with some girl there, a new friend of hers, someone new in town since I went away.

When we reached home I started my vintage Fiat off her car to charge its battery after all these months. That night I watched the rainbow dancer at the buth dance. She's the new girl and she's here with me now. It's a bit soon to be thinking about us long-term, more than a bit, but things are shaping up OK so far. When we got back from the dance we spent the next day or two in bed, barring some meals, and that's been our favourite place ever since. She's going home tomorrow to her rented farmhouse just ten kilometres from here.

April 5, 1977 - Toledo, Spain
Like many travellers I couldn't get travelling out of my blood after my time overseas last year, so I sold my cottage soon after the New Year to go again. House prices have gone mad the last two or three years and I'd done heaps to fix it up - stuff like wiring and plumbing and fixing the rising damp and carpentry and painting. But there was still the mortgage to pay off and the deposit for nineteen acres in the bush for Rainbow and me in both our names (we're that far gone for each other).

We still had a few thousand left after that stuff, and Rainbow's parents loaned her a couple of thou more, so here we are travelling in luxury in a Kombi camper van. It's her first time overseas and it's not five star hotels and stuff, but it's luxury compared to carrying a backpack and hitching to save your money for food.

We're lying on the bed in the Kombi in Spain, and the Kombi's in a sea of goat music. It's a well-equipped van, homely and warm and lived-in. Its fifteen years old and we bought it on the street outside Australia house in London - once around the block and ‘Yair, we'll take it’.

There must be a shepherd out there somewhere, but we can't make him out. We've got the back of the van open to the warm night, but it's black as Jim Johnson's backside. It's not really as black as that, because the stars are bright above the olive grove we're in. It's as if God scattered diamonds across the heavens and pushed them down so they can nearly be touched.

The starry sky's filling with music. The tinkling's getting closer, more than faint tinkles now. Louder, clearer, but it'll never be really loud and it'll never be really clear, because goats don't shake their bells hard enough, and because the bells are made from softish tin that gives a clunk more than a ring. Musical, yes - Notre Dame clear, no.

He who stops being better stops being good ... Oliver Cromwell.

I mentioned in my last blog three weeks ago that we were in the middle of another heatwave here in Victoria. I was so engrossed in my writing after lunch that day that I didn't realize the house was getting too warm until it was too late. The stroke that caused my mute quadriplegia also clobbered the body temperature control centre in my brain, making me react adversely to hot or cold weather. That hot afternoon I realized I had to drive to the wall and nudge the big switch with my elbow to turn on the air conditioner (A/C). I reached for my wheelchair controls, but my arm muscles had already tightened with the heat. I was trapped at my computer, unable to move my chair to turn the A/C on and get the temperature down.

Just half an hour later I could feel a 'Turn' coming on. Occasionally I have these turns -going pale, sweating profusely, feeling sick, too weak to move, etc. Long ago a doctor told me the name for it and said its not uncommon. I find its brought on be extreme discomfort, or prolonged pain, etc. It passes within the hour.

So I knew I was fast going dead white, I could see my jeans and teeshirt turning dark from sweat, I was repressing the heaving that leads to vomiting and I was slumped in the chair too weak to even lift my head. Dying would have been good right then except that I knew it would pass. I prayed no one would turn up, because they would (understandablly) panic at the awful sight of me and would want to call an ambulance. I was fine again an hour later, except for being wiped out for the rest of the day. Would you believe it - the next day was just as hot and the exact same things happened.

My feet swell in summer from the hotter weather. That heatwave made my right foot swell more than ever. So much so that a small amount of the fluid buildup began to ooze out around one toenail. Whenever Bruno was let off the lead he would make a beeline for that toe and lick it clean. Not a bad thing as we all know dog saliva is good. 

A few days later red splothes appeared on my thigh, the next day they had spread right down my leg and covered my now grossly-swollen foot, and the day after that I was in hospital being treated for Cellulitis - an infected and badly-swollen leg and foot. Cellulitis, I was told, is often passed on from animals through an open wound - hmmmmm. I was released from hospital a week later, but I used the fuzzy-head and stomach from the high doses of anti-biotics I was still taking as an excuse to skip another week of this blog. But I'm back now.
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

1984. Bendigo Home and Hospital for the Aged. Continued ...
For six months it's very doubtful that I ever got a real deep long REM sleep. The bottles of thick and yukky liquid food that drip-fed my nosogastric tube lasted two hours and I was being fed ten bottles a day. I'd often be down at physio, occupational therapy or speech therapy without the drip feed for some of the day and it'd have to go on until well in the night to catch up - even when I was asleep. Every two hours I'd wake for between five and ten minutes because a nurse with a torch would be fiddling about changing the drip-food bottle - occasionally for longer because the tube would block up and she'd spend ages unblocking it with my overhead light turned on.

At different two-hourly intervals the nurses would do their rounds and they'd roll me onto my opposite side to prevent me getting bedsores. The more diligent and less feeling nurses would vigorously rub my behind, thus ensuring good circulation and most especially wakefulness. And then I had the extra problem that only by lying on my back could I get comfortable. After being put on my side I'd sleep no more than a hour before pain and discomfort woke me and prevented me getting back to sleep. No, I didn't get much sleep.

Not long before I left Prince Henry's hospital I began having tentative feelings that I was more in contact with my condition than anyone else did and the move to BHHA cemented these feelings. In fact, in some areas it was an accepted truth. A few senior nurses had seen traches and noso-gastrics many years before, but trache patients were so rare in Bendigo that the vast majority of nurses who were locally trained knew of them in theory only. I think it says a lot about these nurses that they had the commonsense to learn from me - many nurses get to be up themselves because they're Registered Nurses, and as such would rather do a thing wrong than be guided by anyone other than another RN or a doctor.

I recognized at BHHA that five months of intimate experience had made me the most knowledgable person there when it came to traches and nosogastrics and it seemed a fair bet that I'd also be more au fait with my general care too. Nurses are very aware that bedsores can easily appear on a bed-ridden patient who isn't turned regularly, but the two-hourly position changes that were inflicted upon me every night at PHH had been a bane of my life. I'd never had a hint of bodily pressure soreness there and I figured this was mostly because I was lying on sheepskins on a special `anti-pressure sores' air mattress.

When the BHHA nurses came to reposition me in my bed for the first time I decided to test if I really needed this regular turning. I lied that I hadn't ever needed this pressure care and they believed me. (From that night on I've never needed to be turned. I've slept on my back ever since then and we even ditched the air mattress soon after I left hospital.) The only thing that intruded on my sleep was the cursed bottle changes to my nosogastric tube, so I decided it had to go. I was handling oral feeds OK - well - I guess honesty requires that I admit that my meal-times were sheer hell, but I lived through each meal (just) and I figured that to be close enough to OK.

I spelled out that I wanted the nosogastric removed, but the medical staff didn't believe I was ready. At PHH a friend brought me the patients' bill of rights, so I said I'd have legal proceedings started if the nosogastric wasn't taken out. Later that day the doctor told me that I was ready.
‘We'll take it out tomorrow, Danny’.
I'd often had to have blocked tubes replaced at PHH, so I knew that tube removal was merely a matter of pulling its twenty centimetre length from my nose.
‘Uh uh - I want it out now.’

I was beginning to display the pigheadedness that was to make me strive for continued improvement for years to come. I'm still like that. It's a crazy way to be, considering I've been told time and again that I'll never improve significantly. I've made very minor changes happen in me but in terms of energy expended to achieve this it hasn't been all that worthwhile. Had I accepted those expert opinions I'd have given up long ago. That wouldn't have been too terrible a way to live. No more need for a brave front, no need to make myself appear positive and hopeful, no more work work work, no more obligation to try. My family and friends just assume I'll go on fighting because I'm me. If I gave in they'd be disappointed at first, but they'd understand and their pressure would be off. Imagine the waves of relief I'd feel as those pressures were lifted. I could spent a life of physical ease with nurses to tend to my every physical need. Wouldn't life be easy?

I can't give up, though, can I? People see me still fighting the odds and they think I'm brave, wonderful and heroic. Actually I'm none of that. I'm merely acting on my inherited characteristics. Don't praise me for being determined, for never giving up - I was born that way. Don't praise me for fighting the odds - I was born that way. Don't praise me for retaining control of my life - I was born that way. Don't praise me for not taking the easy way out - I was born that way. Besides, as long as I try there's very faint hope, and as long as I have hope life can be fine.


... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Continued travels. August 1976, Greece.
Would you believe it, I’m back in Greece. All that hassle with Sinister’s secret police and I still didn’t even consider the un-wisdom of coming back. Not that I’ve had any problems. All the young guy at the desk did when I was going through Greek Customs at the border was check my passport on his computer screen and wave me through. Sure, he looked at me hard for just an instant when he looked up from the screen, but considering my wild-looking hairiness -
‘Hitch-hiking?’ he asked pleasantly as I turned to go.

I’m beside the highway that runs all the way through Europe to the English channel on the Belgium coast. Actually, it probably only goes to somewhere like Paris or Amsterdam and roads from there get you to the ferry ports in France and Belgium. I don’t know – exactly. I haven’t got enough brains to plan ahead exactly and read maps exactly. All I care about knowing exactly is where I am at any given time – sort of. The highway doesn’t go through Athens, though. It comes from Istanbul and runs across the top of Greece before turning north into Yugoslavia and the rest of Europe. You have to go south a couple of hundred kilometres to get to Athens.

Last night I lay my sleeping bag out against a half-built wall in a construction site in Alexandropoulos. I was woken this morning by the cheerful voices of labourers pouring concrete just three metres from my head. I stopped for breakfast as I walked out of town then the very first car I thumbed brought me to the village back there. God knows what it’s called. I suppose I could get my map out and look it up, but do I really need to record another odd-sounding name?

I’m sitting in the grass beside the quiet highway tapping on my lightweight typewriter. At first I stood there expectant and eager, but cars are few and far between here. Most of them don’t even spare a second glance for a hippy-looking b like me as they whizz by, so it wasn’t long before I dug a book out of my backpack. I sat down to make a coffee after an hour or so of very little traffic and didn’t get up again. Once I’d had my bread-and-cheese lunch I gave in and pulled the typewriter out. It’s warm, it’s sunny, it’s really pleasant here in the long dry grass and most importantly I’ve got my typewriter on my lap. I don’s mind at all if no-one stops today. I’ll just lose myself in writing until it gets dark then walk back to the village to buy dinner.

It’s the next morning, about eleven o’clock. It’s yet another day of light traffic with no-one even slowing down to give me the once over. I can hear a car, but it’s coming from in front of me. Pity it’s going the wrong way, because it looks like it’d give me a ride. It’s slowing a bit as it passes me. Shit, it’s one of those big black jobs with two black suits in the front seat! It’s doing a U-turn and coming back to me.
‘Mister Furlong?’ One suit is out and ‘helping’ me into the back seat. ‘We will give you a ride to Athens.’
‘Thanks, but I’m on my way to the border. Just drop me where our roads part.’
‘We will take you to Athens. Mr Sinister is waiting for you.’
How did they know? Of course – that young Customs guy. I must have been flagged on his computer.
-
Sinister had come from Chois just for me. It seems we had a lot to talk about. Takes his job seriously, that one. It’s possible I was just a tad terrified at various times during that long night with him, but he knew he was just going through the motions. On the morrow his underlings took me to a travel office and booked me a bus ticket to England. A magic bus leaving the next morning at seven AM. Magic buses are simply cut-price coaches that cater mainly to backpackers. They run almost express to London – with stops for fuel and meals.

I was at the travel place just before seven, along with thirty or forty others – mainly young Germans destined for Munich. Sinister and his heavies were parked across the narrow street. Dead on seven a woman stepped out of the office.
‘The bus will be thirty minutes late.’
Many grumbles around me. Agitation. Me, I sat down on the footpath and cooked eggs on toast for breakfast. I was finishing my coffee when the bus pulled up. Everyone clustered around the door to pile on. Again I was the odd man out, taking my time to pack my gear and go into the office to fill my little billy with water. Why rush, I thought, we’ve all got pre-booked seats. Besides, the driver was still in the travel office. I followed him out to the coach and sure enough there was one vacant seat left near the back.

Sinister got on as the coach was about to pull off, a heavie with him. Plainclothes cops the world over look like plainclothes cops. He said something in Greek to the driver before coming to speak to me in a loud, threatening voice.
‘I told him you are not to get off before the border.’
Is he trying to intimidate me again and tell everyone I’m a bad man to be avoided? Doesn’t he know he’s just increasing my standing with this young crowd?
He left without another word, but then poked his head back inside the door and looked directly at me. He was smiling the first genuine, friendly smile I’ve had from him.
‘I received your postcard.’

There will be a new post every Saturday.
Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened. ... Dr Suess.

I'm under the pump with my service provider and the lack of carers at present, and this means I haven't had time to spend on my blog. Golden City Support Services has been winding down with me and their service has been increasingly bad for the past month. I've been left high and dry with no carers sent to me on numerous occasions. In the last fortnight alone I've missed out on carers for one morning shift, five lunches, two teas and one bed. Not having breakfast or lunch or even dinner is no big deal. Having to skip meals doesn't faze me in itself, but ...

A fortnight ago we had a bit of a heatwave, five days straight over 40 degrees celcius. (100 degrees plus fahrenheit.) By lunchtime on these days I'm looking forward to something to drink, but if there's no lunch shift I have to stay parched until dinner shift, or bed shift. Similarly, I'm sometimes needing to poo by mid-morning. Because I choose to live in my own home I have to battle the urge until the lunch carer arrives and can sit me on the toilet, but if there's no lunch shift I have to try to battle on until dinner shift. Occasionally I can't hold it - imagine how wonderful it feels to be a grown man sitting in your own shit for hours.

Anyway, GCSS finished up last night and now I'm with a new service provider, Bartay. They're still in the process of hiring new carers to supplement the couple who came over from GCSS with me, so things are going to continue being rough for me for a week or two. But there's light at the end of the tunnel.
... ... ...
Today is another 40 degree day, the middle of another four or five day heatwave with tomorrow forecast to be hotter.
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Campbelltown, Melbourne, Victoria
I’m standing on a small ledge about two hundred feet from the ground with someone’s hands on my shoulders from behind to steady me. I’m not very happy, at all. I can’t make myself look down at all now, but I know there’s a circular swimming pool directly below me. I guess that’s to stop jumpers like me splattering blood all over everything if the elasticized rope breaks - or if the bungy guys miscalculate and give you three or four feet too much of it. I barely glanced down the first time. Now I just fix my eyes on the far horizon and start fighting off that ever-increasing vertigo thing. It’s my third jump in the last fifteen minutes and every time is worse than the time before.

I don’t like being out on this ledge very much, especially not for this long. They’ve got a video camera rigged up on the ground to shoot everyone’s jump and they radioed up to us to hang five while they do something to it. It should just be three, two, one, bungeeeeeeeeeeee, but I seem to have been out here for ages.

My brother Rick is down there somewhere looking up at me, but there’s no way he’d be up here. Heights don’t agree with him, never have, and anyway he’s not stupid enough for this. He only came to drive me the one hundred and twenty kilometres here to the bungy jumping centre. That’s one good thing about me being a mute quadriplegic - it’s brought us closer together.

The actual bungy setup is basically a two hundred-foot tower with an elevator cage that takes you to the top. Once you’re up there a couple of the bungy guys strap the rope to your ankles and con you to step off the metal ledge outside the cage.

I watched from below while the guy before me went up and he definitely didn’t look like a happy camper. When he got out on the ledge he shit himself and he froze. The bungy guys tried their best to talk him into it for about ten minutes, but they had no hope. The unhappy camper wasn’t going to jump for love nor money, so they had to give up and bring him back down. I was the next one in the cage and it stank to high heaven, because the poor bastard really had shit himself!

Something’s happening up here at last. It’s about time too. It’s not nice standing for too long on this bloody high ledge. The radio spoke behind me just now. It seems the ground crew wants them to re-synchronize the camera up here with the one down there. That’ll take a few minutes, but I don’t mind that. One of the guys is lifting me back inside the cage to sit on the metal bench again and that will give my crazy fear of heights time to settle down a bit.

I’m glad the bungy guys are still fiddling with the camera, because just thinking about that cliff climbing and parachuting was starting to set me off again. Before the first jump we told them I could stay standing OK as long as someone held on to me to keep my balance. We also said that when it was time for me to jump to just push me off. Sounds simple and worry-free, doesn’t it? Well, it wasn’t for the first jump. They farted around for what seemed like ages lifting me out then getting me standing straight and steady. Those extra seconds allowed time for my ‘vertigo’ to lock in hard.

We pre-arranged that all I needed to do was to shake my head and they’d call it off there and then, but that’s not an option in reality. I’ve been scared out of my brain and just about frozen with fear out there on the ledge every time so far. I feel bad now and I’m still sitting inside, so when I’m out there this time it’ll be terrible.

The other times I was screaming in my head to call it off, but I told myself that I was frozen with fear and couldn’t shake my head. That’s not true though. The truth is I’m forced to go through with it by Rick down there and mum and Younger Sister and all my other well-meaning family and friends who have ever admired me for any of my exploits as a quadriplegic. They’ve got a certain impression of me and the last thing in the world I want is to wreck that. I’m sort of expected to do this stuff, so in times of trouble my well-developed ego takes over.

The bungy guys are done with the camera and one of them is kneeling to check the rope one more time.
‘You ready, Danny?’
I’m nodding yes and praying they haven’t noticed the dry retching that I’ve been trying to suppress ever since the last jump. When you reach the end of the rope on the way down it stretches out, then it pulls you back up, then down, then up until the movement fades out. I guess because I can’t move at all my body doesn’t give and follow the changing directions smoothly. I get jerked and jolted around a bit. Except for that one time horse-riding I don’t think my body has been jolted in ten years, not even the smooth motion of walking, so my guts can be excused for heaving after the jolts today.

‘5 ……. ‘
Five? -
‘4…….3 ……2 - ….’
Why don’t they just start at three and count down fast?
‘1……..’
‘Bungeeeee!’

Down I plummet! Straight towards the beckoning blue swimming pool, then the rope stretches tight and jerks my body around and back into the air! Up, up, pause, down, down, jerk! Less after each jerky whip of my quad’s weakened body. Soon I’m just dangling above that watery blueness like a worm on a hook. But I’m not brownish-grey like a washed out worm. My face is a stop light in hell - bright red and burning hot from an eternity in Hades’ fires; and my arms and chest are from a drowned pearl diver below tropical waves - clammy wet and morgue white.
-
Rick is wheeling me out of the office and I’m dry-retching violently from time to time. We’ll have to wheel through a big group of new arrivals to get to the car. The third jump wasn’t good, but at least it didn’t take long. Rick was the one who said no more to the bungy guys. I pretended disappointment of course, but really I would’ve said it if he hadn’t. I’ve done three bungy jumps and that’s enough for me - forever. I figure every man and his dog does one jump, some even do two, but three is serious. And three in a row by a quad - there won’t be too many of them around, and being a bit different to the herd is what it’s all about.

We’re picking our way through the waiting group. Just a minute or so now and I’ll be in the car and I can die without everyone watching me.
‘Excuse me, Mate’ one of the group is saying to Rick ‘We got here just after his first jump. Why does he need the wheelchair?’
‘Stuffed if I know’ Rick’s answering without stopping. ‘There was nothing wrong with him before we came here. They said to do a couple more jumps to shake things back into place, but when that didn’t work they just loaned us the chair and said he’ll come good in time.’

There will be a new post every Saturday.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. … Winston Churchill.

    I still haven't worked out how to amend the author information at the side of this page, so I'll introduce myself again here. I'm a wheelchair-bound mute quad in my sixties and I'm been this way for thirty years. Quadriplegics tend to introduce themselves with their C1, C2, C3, etc classification, but I don't know what my C classification is. I can't talk and I can't move except for minimal movement in my left arm. That makes me pretty well stuffed, which is all the classification I've ever needed.
I live alone in my own home in Castlemaine, near Bendigo in country Victoria. Government-funded carers come in morning, noon, night and nighty-night to do the basics for me. Little insights into my situation are sprinkled throughout this blog. (Hmmm, I think I'll save this intro for next time too.)

    I'm a writer. I haven't got enough movement to type like normal or to access a computer like normal, but I have a special computer keyboard that is operated by a head laser attached to my reading glasses. I've been working on a trilogy of fantasy adventure novels for years. (The Drinsighe trilogy.) I had the three books all written and ready to be published, or so I thought, so I let one of my daughters read the first book, Ellydd Gate. Gemma is an editor by profession. She did a thorough edit of Ellydd Gate that blew away all my illusions.
    Ellydd Gate is a never ending novel. Never ending in the writing of it. No matter how much I improve it Gemma always sees more I could do. It was a good story before I asked her to edit it. Her fresh eyes saw a few places where the story could be improved and lots of places where the writing could be improved. I've incorporated most of her suggested changes over the last few months. I finished that yesterday and now I'm going through the book yet again, looking for all the typos I've created during my recent work. And here, I hope, the never-endingness of Ellydd Gate finishes. No novel is ever perfect in every regard. After this proof-read I'm done.
    I let my sister read the whole Drinsighe trilogy a year ago. I love her because she said nothing but flattering things about it. How couldn't you love someone who reads a thousand page story you've written and says she was disappointed ... disappointed that it ended?
    She nbserved that I must have a good imagination, but I don't think Drinsighe was anything to do with my imagination. We sometimes hear authors say that the book wrote itself. I think this is more than a figure of speech. I think nearly all fiction writers are like me. We are really just scribes putting down a pre-existing story. The Drinsighe story has never been heard before, but I'm certain it existed somewhere, somehow, and put itself inside my head bit by bit so that it could take solid form.
    I didn't sit down one day and think up the story. I didn't plan it out. I didn't know how it was going to to end. Often I didn't even know what the next day of writing would bring. I didn't know what adventures my heroes would have along the way. I started with a male hero and his sister, but I was surprised to discover that he dies fifty pages before she wins the day, and wins it much better than he ever could. Yeah, Drinsighe wrote itself.

Must go now ... it's a lovely Saturday morning and my dog Bruno is telling me it's time we were out walking.
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

August 1984 - Bendigo Home and Hospital for the Aged, Bendigo, Victoria
Sister Murphy ran the ward and her sidekick was another fifty five-year-old introduced as sister Graham. Had they been under fifty they would most probably have used their first names. sister Murphy attempted to communicate via my board quite a bit during the next four months, but age's inflexibility prevented her mind from loosening up enough to become more than mildly proficient with it. sister Graham never once struck difficulty with it, because she merely avoided using it for my entire stay. In fact, I'm sure she never even asked me one single question that needed as much as my ‘yes/no’ eyes answer - and that doesn't leave much else. I think not giving me a chance to communicate was usually just a way for some nurses to get out of work, because if I'm not allowed to express my needs and wants I obviously require less care.

I'd arrived at BHHA during morning tea, so after a while two or three young nurses appeared. This mitigated my worries about communicating with the older nurses somewhat. BHHA had long been a training hospital for State Enrolled Nurses. These SENs were as competent and likeable as their city cousins were, but they lacked the big city poise and savoir faire. The atmosphere of farms and of small country towns clung to these fresh-faced freckled young girls, and that reminded me of my own youth. Long dry grass, the creek barely flowing into and out of the deep swimming hole, and my first dabbling with sex in a paddock on a warm summer's day with a girl exactly like these, but younger.

Sister Mary oversaw these trainee nurses. She was Bendigo born-and-bred, with a tomboyish attractiveness and an infectious vitality that hid her quick-witted intelligence. Ward work would slacken and sometimes dribble out in the quiet early-afternoon hours, so often she'd come to talk with me. She was very quick with my Etran board and at times I'd dictate letters to her. After five fairly 'solitary' months it felt great to once again be able to communicate with the world. While we were chatting one afternoon she asked me casually to tell her all about myself. All??? On the board???
‘I was a talker, a runner, a commando soldier, a house-builder, a doer. Isn't it ironic?’

sister Murphy never displayed much of a sense of humour, but on that first day I got my only hint that her style of humour might be linked more to subtle or understated irony, or something like that, because she had placed me in a two-bed room with an elderly gentleman introduced to me simply as Michael. Michael had the severe shakes of a Parkinson's disease sufferer, so he wasn't able to ever hold my board still enough for me to use it, and as the disease had clobbered his voice he couldn't even hold a one-way conversation with me.

He was one of those endearing gentlefolk you meet from time to time, and whom you instinctively sense wouldn't hurt a fly. I'm not like that - in fact I carry a can of fly-spray. Most people warm to lovable characters like Michael, but some see their gentleness as a weakness. They come down on them like a ton of bricks. The night-staff at BHHA were like this to him.
‘Bzzzzz!’
‘OK, Michael! We'll be down there in a minute!’
(Bad news, Mike Old Boy - a nurse's minute is anywhere from five minutes to half an hour.)
After ten minutes he buzzed for help much more urgently.
‘Bzzz, bzzz, bzzzzzzzzzz!’
‘Alright, Michael! Get your finger off the buzzer! I said we'd be down soon!’
Another ten minutes elapsed before I heard a clatter as the three nurses put down their empty cups and wandered down the corridor to our room.
‘Well, what is it? Spit it out, we haven’t got all night.’

The questions were shouted loudly and slowly as if there was an inverse relationship between a patient's hearing and comprehension and their ability to talk.

‘Shit, you’ve wet the bloody bed.’

I was mentally fingering my fly-spray. That particular trio were so moronic that I had nothing to lose by getting myself in their bad books. Even when they all combined they were unable to use my board more fluently than to take ten minutes or more to interpret my Etran spelling of ‘B - O - T - T - L - E’, so the following morning I reported them to Sister Murphy and insisted she tell them that I was the culprit. They needed to know someone was watching them with Michael. I figured that at the worst they'd just refuse to answer my nightly buzz for a bottle and if that was the case I'd merely piss the bed and make some much-hated work for them.

From that time on they treated me coolly, but they knew to always respond to Michael's calls immediately and with the utmost courtesy. I couldn't do anything to protect the rest of the ward, but I was already learning how to put the Fear of God into nurses.
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

My former travels. April 1976, Turkey.
He led me this way and that until we stopped outside a very seedy-looking café/coffee shop. It was uninviting, heavy, sullen. I had no idea where we were. The ploy was obviously to have me so lost I couldn’t risk not paying up later on. The inside of the cafe was no better than the outside – poorly-lit, bare wooden floor, bare wooden tables and chairs, two nasty-looking men playing backgammon aggressively at one of the front tables, and all but empty.The atmosphere was seedy, heavy. Sullen. The only customers were an out-of-place couple eating at a table further back with an Ahmed clone. The Out-of-Placers were neatly dressed, had cameras with telescopic lenses slung from their chairs and had the word ‘Tourist’ tattooed on their foreheads. Ahmed said something in Turkish to the cigarette-smoking sullen man behind the sullen counter as we wove through the sullen tables to a side door.

 ‘That man is my cousin.’ Ahmed threw over his shoulder to me. ‘This is his restaurant. The food is very good. Turkish food.’
He opened the bare wooden door and we stepped into a different world. The room was light and colourful. There were rugs to-die-for, both underfoot and on three walls, two low couches deep and comfy, low tables holding a hookah and a silver coffee set and that familiar smell that reminded me of home – hash smoke. Sparsely-furnished, yes, but everything in the room was honest-to-God, non-tourist Turkish. Even, I was to learn, the dope and the company.

 ‘This is Damad. He is my cousin’ Ahmed said, indicating the well-dressed youth lounging on the closest couch.
‘Another cousin, Ahmed?’ I asked. ‘Another cousin???’
‘No, Danny,’ he replied with a smile, ‘this time he really is my cousin. And this is my brother Tahsin and my other brother Abdi.’
Tahsin and Abdi were sipping coffee on the other couch. They were both older than Ahmed – Tahsin an architect and Arbi a med student. Damad was also studying medicine. They all spoke only-just-passable English. Except Ahmed. He’d left his street persona at the door. Everything about him was more genuine, more likeable, and his English was more correct and much less accented.

An amiable afternoon followed, hilarious at times, serious when they talked about Turkey’s present politics.
‘The café out there, Danny’ laughed Ahmed early on. ‘It looks like that for the tourists. They are happy to pay us much more if we can take them to a bad Turkish restaurant like in the very old movies.’
As if on queue the sullen proprietor entered with a large silver tray of very fresh afternoon nibblies – dips, Turkish bread, falafels and some sorts of meaty things. He was smiling, friendly, interested - so different now he was serving Turks.

The afternoon quickly ran ahead into evening, with the liberal help of dope and raki (the Turkish equivalent of ouzo). The evening was an enjoyable blur for me. All I remember is that my companions wouldn’t allow me, their guest, to pay for anything. They all saw me safely back to my Star hotel that night, genuinely urging me to move elsewhere – anywhere elsewhere. The following morning Ahmed and Damad turned up in a car to show me the country around Istanbul and the morning after that Ahmed saw me to the country bus station.

I’d decided to catch a bus to the Greek border and then hitch-hike right across Europe to the UK. The bus for the two or three hundred kilometres trip turned out to be a comfortable, modern coach mostly full of mostly well-dressed country people (I guessed). The only noteworthy thing happened when the road to the border ran along the top of the Marmara Sea. There was just the sandy strip between the road and the water for kilometre after kilometre. As it was a weekday the beaches were pretty deserted, but there were a few people swimming in the more populated areas. All the women on the coach (and most women in Turkey as far as I’ve seen) wear longish to long dresses and tops on the street, but the few women on the beaches were clad almost exclusively in modern bikinis just like back home. Every time one such woman came into view up ahead nearly all the men from the far side of the coach stood up to get a better perving view. And not one of their wives remonstrated.
 

There will be a new post every Saturday.
Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much. … Oscar Wilde.

I've been told my posts are too long, too daunting a task to read. I'm cutting this one down, even though to my writer's mind it's wrong to chop episodes so short. You tell me.
I was also advised to give a brief introduction to me in the bit about the Author at the side of this page. I don't know how to edit that, so until I find out how I'll just put a few words here in the body of the blog. I'm a mute quad in his sixties. A non-verbal quadriplegic. The only movement I've got below the neck is a slight bit in my left arm. My fingers have tightened up into fists, so to move my power wheelchair I nudge its control stick with my knuckles - or with the side of my fist on good, warm days when my limbs aren't so tight and I'm relaxed.

While I was lying in bed waiting for the carer to arrive this morning I was racking my brains for something to write in this blog. All I could think of writing was the negative things that go with being a quad. God knows there's enough of them, but that doesn't mean life itself is negative or bad. I should explain that, but I'm going to leave it for another time. Either its complicated or I'm too lazy today - take your pick.

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August 12, 1984 - Bendigo Home and Hospital for the Aged, Bendigo, Victoria
I was brought here to Bendigo today. Nurse Belinda the lovely was sent with me in the ambulance to watch over me. She’s very good at the Etran board, because when she was on night shift at PHH we'd sometimes talk away a midnight hour or two. We did the same in the ambulance. She asked innocently if I knew the road we were on. Did I know it?   It was the road to my hometown! Tears streamed down my face as I spelled out that the previous one hundred times I'd travelled this road I'd been the driver whereas now it seemed quite likely that I'd never drive again. When I'd regained my composure the ambulance driver offered to detour to call in at Granny Thomas Gully, but I said no. I knew that having to leave again for more time in hospital would just crack me up.

We'd been followed along the highway by a car carrying Physio, Speechy, and the PHH social worker. They were coming to Bendigo to tell their counterparts all they needed to know about me. Physio had always struck me as a bit of a moralistic prude, but she was a physio and an amateur psychologist firstly and she'd defended my `bit on the side' activities when at PHH. She'd argued that my, um, nocturnal activities with the Other Woman were good physical physiotherapy and would help my deflated view of myself. The social worker had reason to meet the Other Woman a few times at PHH and although she had urged her to cut and run she was going to Bendigo to try to convince them that they had no right to interfere with my private affairs.

I didn't go to Bendigo Hospital like I'd thought. Bendigo Hospital is for acute patients and it does have full suctioning facilities and stuff. I was transferred to the chronic illness place, Bendigo Home and Hospital for the Aged (BHHA). BHHA's geared to long-term care and rehab for old people, but it was my only alternative. I'd imagined an old and decrepit building, but the main building at BHHA looks great from the outside. It's a beautiful old three storey brick building that's painted virgin white and sprawls to left and right. I'm in the recently-built character-less appendage of a rehabilitation wing around the side.

They lop off the occasional limb at Bendigo Hospital and send the amputee here to the BHHA Rehab ward until they're ready to re-enter the real world or until they suicide - whichever comes first. BHHA always has three or four amputees on Rehab, but that the majority of the ward's patients suffer from the ailments of old age.

August 13 to December 12, 1984- Bendigo Home and Hospital for the Aged, Bendigo, Victoria
At first I had reservations about BHHA, but I was wrong. Most of the nurses were trainees and were typical country girls. Compared to their city cousins they were fresh-faced, naiveish, unsophisticated. But as nurses go they were every bit as good as the best anywhere. The facilities for a specialized stroke patient were lacking a bit and the qualified nurses were rusty on trache care and suctioning techniques, but they went out of their way to brush up on these things immediately.

I'd been spoiled at PHH, because the main qualifications for entry into its nursing training program must have been good looks and good deportment, though the training ensured that these young cuties became good nurses. Forty was ancient for these city nurses, so in five months and over three hundred nurses I only ever met the one who looked to be near that age. When I arrived at BHHA my heart sunk, because the three nurses on duty were all at least fifty. I'd found in my first five months that people over thirty five or forty often have more trouble grasping the concept of my board, and as they climb in age they seem to be correspondingly slower at learning to use it - often never reaching the `nimbleness of mind' required to think ahead from my first few words to anticipate full sentences.
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My former travels. April 1976 - Turkey  
I checked out the magnificent Blue mosque the day after I saw Krzysztof off, first washing my hands, neck and feet in one of the stone troughs outside specific to that purpose. While I was inside it crossed my mind that maybe it wasn’t really right that non-believing Westerners like me should be curiously in a mosque. Then I remembered how I didn’t question my presence when I was inside that little Greek Orthodox chapel on Lesvos, and in Singapore’s Buddhist Fu Lu Shou-Bugis temple and in the Catholic St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne, even though I don’t believe in those religions either. That made me wonder why we pussyfoot around anything to do with Islam, and Islam alone.

On the steps outside the Blue mosque I was accosted by one of the many young Turks who latch onto tourists and show them the sights – for a not-yet-mentioned fee. His name was Ahmed. His English was fairly good but pretty-heavily accented. Somehow he got my name out of me before I brushed him off and went on my way. An hour later he accidentally came across me sitting at a table outside a Turkish coffee shop finishing a late lunch and a coffee.

 ‘We meet again, Danny, my friend. I am here to see my cousin. This is his shop.’
He sat down uninvited and plunged into conversation, not bothering to go in and see his cousin. I sipped the last of my thick black coffee, but not the potent dregs, then I brushed him off and went on my way again. Another half hour saw me looking hard into a small carpet-and-jilubas shop. That’s an incongruous combination – carpets and clothing.
‘Do not buy a carpet from there, Danny. From there they are a lot of money.’ Ahmed had accidentally come across me again. ‘My cousin has a carpet factory. I will take you.’

I had been staring into the tiny shop because it had a full-length mirror at the back for its clothing customers. I hadn’t seen myself in a mirror since God knows when. Not since back home all those months ago. I had fairly long hair and a beard back then but I kept it reasonably neat and brushed. Now the whole lot had grown longer and much bushier, beard and hair too. My plain jeans and neat navy-blue jacket didn’t scream ‘Way-out Westerner backpacking hippy’, but all that bushy hair on my head and face??? Even nothing-fazes-me me had a double-take. I immediately flashed on poor old Krzysztof and the remarkable way he accepted something so alien. I must buy a hairbrush soon, and get a haircut too.

I nodded dumbly at Ahmed. You had to admire his optimism. I mean - someone looking the way I did buying a carpet??? And I admired the way he persistently kept accidentally bumping into such an obviously lost cause. After three laneways and two back-alleys of cheerful selling-talk he stopped dead and took me by the arm.
‘You do not want to buy a carpet, do you Danny?’ he asked seriously.
I shook my head slowly.
‘That is good.’ he exclaimed, all beams again. ‘I knew that when we were at the mosque. Today is my birthday. I am not working today.’
Like I believe any of that.
‘My friends are at a party for me’ he went on. ‘I will take you.’
I told him he was on. I knew the day would end with him asking me for money for something or other, but I wanted to see how far he would go with this charade.