The Chattering Arses

I've been a relatively regular gig goer since I was about 15 years old. I've seen a range of musical artists over the years ranging from U2 to UK Subs, The Beach Boys to The Bellrays, The Offspring to Springsteen, Jeff Wayne's War of the World's to The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain. I've been to some amazing (and not so amazing) venues during that time, from The Royal Albert Hall to The Tunbridge Wells Forum (a converted public toilet). So I've seen a fairly wide range of musical genres and audience types down the years, I've been in the moshpit, up the back in the seats and on three occasions actually found myself on the stage (the least said about those experiences the better).

Music has been the staple of my life and going to live shows has always mean't so much to me, some of the best nights of my life have been spent at gigs. So it is with a sense of great sadness that I find myself almost completely fallen out of love with the experience now. Maybe it's my age, I'm a youngish 52 now, but the last couple of years I've spent an increasing amount of my time at gigs getting the complete arse with the people around me.

I first encountered this phenomenon at the cinema, another activity I always used to love, but something I barely do anymore for reasons I'll outline now. People chatting, people rustling plastic bags of sweets, people chewing like rabid horses on dustbin sized boxes of popcorn, people noisily gurgling through straws from a vat of sugary drink that only serves to make them even more hyperactive so that they can bang their legs that much harder on the back of my seat to the point where I suffer whiplash by the end of the film. Plus, of course, honourable mention must go to the people who can't resist the temptation to get their godforsaken mobile phone out to check whether they've missed something on social media in the 8 minutes since they last checked. I just can't do cinema anymore for these reasons, I'd rather wait for the film to come out on dvd or whatever and watch it at home where I can view it and scratch my arse in peace (or my wife's, if she asks me nicely). I know I'm sounding curmudgeonly here but I'm sure I can't be the only one who suffers this (in fact my 19 year old daughter agreed with me on this the other day which was a source of immense pride to me).

Now of course a cinema and a gig are very different environments. The former should be observed with pretty much silent attention, the latter can be a fairly raucous, noisy, collaborative and physical affair. So you would think the noise made by your fellow gig goers would be less of an issue at a concert venue. You think wrong. Over the last few years, regardless of the band I'm seeing, I've become increasingly frustrated by people who just can't shut the fuck up talking to each other throughout the performance. I'm not talking about people muttering the odd comment to each other between songs or singing enthusiastically, whooping at the singer's pre song ramblings (although that can often get on my tits) or even chatting from time to time with things like "I haven't heard this one in ages" or "is it me or is the sound shit?" or "I'm dying for a piss but I darent go to the bogs cos they're going to play the only song I know of theirs any minute". No, this is people who insist on chatting constantly throughout and so loudly that they're actually raising their voices to the level that they can hear each other over the sound of that irritating bunch of musicians on stage who they've paid money to go and see. Chances are these morons have spent a few hours in the pub beforehand chatting anyway so is it too much to ask to just curtail the mindless chit chat and listen to the band? Not to mention have a little consideration for the people around you whose enjoyment of the performance you are completely ruining.

The problem isn't quite so intolerable when the songs being played are loud and raucous numbers, the volume drowns the chat out to a large degree. Its when the more moody, slower, quieter songs are played, those best listened to with a degree of melancholic reverence, the sound of meaningless drivel being shouted from one mouth into another's earhole two feet away from you is not only completely distracting and rage inducing, but also completely ruins the enjoyment of the song. Why in God's name would you do that?

I wondered for a while if it was just a London thing as most the gigs I go to are in that city. Us southerners are viewed by many in the UK as a fairly unsociable bunch and given my general experiences of people in other parts of the country I'd say that's not far off the mark. But I've had similar issues at gigs elsewhere, Brighton to name but one. So maybe that's a red herring.

Your viewing location at the venue doesn't seem to be a factor in this either. It's happened when I've been down the front, at the back or at the side. So it's clearly a 'human condition' thing. They just can't help themselves.

Now I'm a pretty tolerant chap (certainly more than I was as a youngster) but I have a tolerance threshold for this kind of thing and sadly this threshold has been breached more than I would have liked of late. What's equally annoying is the attitude of these people when you ask them (always politely, at first at least) if they could possibly curtail their chattering and perhaps listen to the band. It's usually an indignant grunt and sometimes it's aggressive confrontation. Hardly ever an apology. I guess if you're ignorant enough to behave this way to start with then you're not going to understand or like it when someone points it out to you. If nothing else, it's disrespectful to the band who are up on stage slogging their nuts out for your entertainment. Of course, I then spend the rest of the gig somewhat on edge just waiting for the twats to have consumed enough additional alcohol to kick off with me. Thus, regardless of whether they shut up or not, the rest of my evening has thereby been ruined somewhat. The joy of the occasion  is sapped from my soul and I'm usually left quietly raging inside and ready to smack the first one to utter a word from that point on. Irrational on my part really but that's how it invariably leaves me feeling.

I went to a gig a number of years ago, a solo gig by Justin Sullivan, the lead singer of my favourite band, New Model Army. I can't recall the venue, I think it may have been The Water Rats in London (I could be mistaken). Being a solo gig with a couple of his muckers on other instruments it's a mainly acoustic type set therefore the music is of a more relaxed and quiet nature than the full band performances. Of course, there were some people chatting loudly to each other through some of the songs and it got to the point where Justin simply stopped mid song and asked them whether he should just not bother anymore, or they shut up! Marvellous. They sensibly opted for the latter.

Now I do understand that when you're part of a large crowd of people, human nature dictates there's always going to be people who irritate you. But it seems to have got worse of late and the last two gigs I went to were the last straw for me. The first, at Hammersmith Odeon, where two girls sat in front of us spent the ENTIRE night on their mobile phones posting to Facebook and intermittently holding said phones up in the air to take endless mind numbingly tedious selfies of themselves. In addition a near fight broke out when a gobby female then refused to move from the aisle she was stood dancing in (health and safety guv) and security moved in (politely at first) and the whole thing escalated.

The second gig was this week at the Albert Hall. To my immediate left, two blokes constantly talking loudly throughout the performance, only shutting up when I politely pointed out the band were on stage, the show had begun and I'd quite like to hear that and not their pointless dialogue. The two blokes in front of them then proceeded to do the same and the two in front of us and to the right had a phone in the air, live streaming the entire show to god knows who. The guy in front of me asked them to stop it as it was so distracting but they flat out refused and he spent the rest of the night clearly angry at the situation. So his night was ruined too. It got to the point I just gave up and just concentrated on staying calm.

I'm not laying the blame at the younger generation either, I've had issues with younger people and people around my age too. I just can't put my finger on what's changed over the years, why this seems to be happening increasingly of late. Perhaps people's attitudes to watching live bands has changed as our minds have become so used to being distracted by the instant, throwaway media content that is constantly available to us to digest, our attention spans have diminished, our appreciation of talented performance has been diluted. I dunno. Maybe I'm just a miserable old git.

I have tickets to see my beloved NMA in December, it'll be fitting if that's the last gig I go to. I'm probably being overly dramatic about this but that's how I feel at the moment. I just can't be doing with it anymore. I'd love to know what other people think and whether they've had similar experiences, I can't believe it's just me. So feel free to comment either way, I'm genuinely curious.

The End

Sadly she finally fell short of the telegram from the Queen.

It came quickly, painlessly, peacefully. Mum passed away on Sunday 19th August after struggling with her cancer for only a couple of months.

It was a shock, naturally, as we were guided down a particular chemotherapy route on the understanding it could give her a prolonged life expectancy, but as it turned out, that wasn't to be. We weren't prepared for that at all. Part of me thinks, despite the unbelievable courage she showed, at age 94, going through this, it just got to the stage where her body just couldn't take any more. The bucketloads of tablets and pain relief, the multiple weekly hospital visits. It is probably a blessed relief to her that this is over now, difficult as that is to reconcile in my mind.

I've experienced grief and the loss of a parent before, my Dad passed away in 1995. It's horrible and it never really goes away, just dissipates until photos are glimpsed or pertinent anniversary dates are reached. Then it floods back like a wave.

My emotions are still a bit raw at the moment, funeral arrangements and paperwork are being dealt with and I imagine once that's all over with the grief will set in. I know you have to remember the happy times, celebrate their life rather than mourn their death but it's easier said than done. I guess in this case my Mum lived 94 happy years whereas my Dad was taken way too soon at 69 years old. Some consolation I guess. Both of them were taken without overly protracted suffering so that's another.

The grief is in the post. For now, I'm thankful for having had the most amazing, loving parents a son could ever have wished for.

Changes

So, a lot has happened since my last post. Mum ended up being in hospital for ten days due to her low sodium level. She was discharged on 17 July but that ten days was an absolute rollercoaster.

The effects of her low sodium were frailty and difficulty in moving about plus, more alarmingly, a reduction in her cognitive function. This was tough to deal with and I touched on this in my previous post.

The time she spent in hospital was a tough experience for both her and us. A lot of the time she didn't really know what was going on around her and it was like hell on earth in there at times. Without wanting to sound horrible, she was surrounded by very old, very ill old ladies and this probably didn't do her mental state much good either. She couldn't sleep at night because of other patients wailing and screaming through the night and some wandering around the ward in a state of confusion. At times she started hallucinating that it was her doing the wailing (even while I was sat at her bedside).

For a lot of the time she was literally sat all day doing nothing until visiting time about 3pm. They fitted her with an adult nappy so she didn't even have to think about going to the toilet. This only served to worsen her mental state really. At times I felt anger about the situation but I don't blame the NHS staff I appreciate these poor people are operating in an environment with ever increasing workloads and ever decreasing staffing levels. They simply don't have the time to care for each patient individually 24/7. I left that hospital in tears on more than one occasion. There were days when I just couldn't see Mum ever coming out of there again.

But, mercifully, her sodium level finally crept up after endless Sodium Chloride drips and tablets and her mobility and cognition returned to something resembling normal. There's a saying about people who stay in hospital for long periods becoming 'institutionalised' and we had that fear for Mum. She got to the point where she would constantly need to be told what she had to do next and every time I left her at the end of visiting time she would be fretting about what she would do after I'd gone. Once her cognition had improved we would leave her with little lists of things to do, just small things like walking up and down the ward, doing 'stand up/sit down' exercises, a crossword, writing stuff down etc, just little things that would occupy her without having to ask someone all the time or worry about it.

Anyway, she's out of hospital now, but sadly, unable to live by herself anymore. She lived at home independently with no problem for 23 years after my Dad passed away but unfortunately she's currently not mobile or strong enough to do that. Plus with her chemo regime she has to visit hospital twice a week and needs reliable transport.

So, changes afoot, myself and one of my brothers will now be her full time carers, split between us, she'll live with me at my house in Kent for 2 weeks (which, geographically isn't ideal given her hospital is in East London) then 2 weeks at her own house with my brother and so on.

During the 2 weeks with me I'll be unable to work so this is a big change in my life situation and it's a bit daunting but it's a situation we don't really have a lot of choice in. My brother lives in Devon and will travel up to Mum's for his 'stints' every two weeks so, whilst he's retired and doesn't have a work situation to consider, it's still a big change for him too.

The saying about being afraid of change has never felt so relevant as it does to me at present but life has a habit of throwing curve balls at you from time to time. Hopefully we can bat this one out of the park but at the moment we're at the plate awaiting the first pitch (apologies for the corny analogy!).

New situations, new routines. Time will tell.

Day 1

I'm sat in an empty hospital cubicle waiting for my Mum to come back from the X-ray department. I have some time to kill and no Internet or phone signal so thought I'd write something.

Today was our first visit for her chemotherapy treatment. It's a simple injection and a few tablets and that should be it, however, 6½ hours later and we're still here! There was a 2 hour wait for the pharmacy to send her pills over to the chemo unit and then, following a review of her blood tests from a few days ago, they discovered her sodium levels were way lower than they should be. This subsequently meant she had to be transferred to the Major Treatment unit in A&E whereby she had further bloods taken, an ECG, hooked up to a sodium chloride drip and now is having X-Ray's taken. She will be kept in overnight for monitoring and possibly further blood tests tomorrow morning. As a result of all this, one of the chemo elements of her treatment couldn't be administered today so that will start next week on her 2nd visit.

So, what was expected to be a 2 hour visit is looking like it'll be a 24 hour visit. Not an ideal first chemo week!

Couple all this with the fact she also has to visit the dentist next Tuesday for a tooth extraction (after she's been back to hospital in the morning of course for some more routine tests), before then resuming week 2 of her chemo next Thursday, I just can't imagine what's going through her mind at the moment. I repeat, she's 94 (I have to keep reminding myself of this).

Speaking of her mind, the low sodium thing is a new one on me. The suspected cause is dehydration (although a number of things can be at the root of it) because she doesn't drink anywhere near enough fluids, despite our badgering her to do so. As a result of this condition, a loss of cognition can result and this solves a mystery for us because literally the day after I wrote my last blog where I banged on about how fit and on the ball she was for a 94 year old, she completely changed, almost overnight. Her mood had darkened (not in a sinister way, more a negative outlook way), her memory and awareness of what was happening around her started to fail her periodically and she became so very frail. Both of these could be attributed to the Myeloma but the doctors told us today that, certainly the cognitive issues, were most likely a result of the low sodium.

Quite alarming I must say. Having had a Mum who, all her life, has been fit and very sharp mentally up to age 94, barely been near a hospital (besides visits to give birth on 3 occasions) to suddenly encounter a lady who could no longer fend for herself and barely know which day of the week it was, is extremely upsetting and very difficult to deal with all of a sudden.

So, fingers crossed, the sodium transfusion will improve that, albeit whilst the chemo kicks in and simultaneously makes her feel poorly in different ways! All the fun of the fayre eh?!

I have moments of frustration with this, not aimed at my Mum, just at the situation because I hate not being able to fix things. I'm powerless to mend it and that's really tough to handle. I have a newfound appreciation of carers, my god what a tough job these people have and they probably deal with way more difficult people and conditions than my Mum and her sudden affliction (which I'm hoping will prove only temporary anyway). That all sounds a bit horrible but I mean it in the nicest way. It's not like we're having to bed bath Mum or anything, but having to more or less watch over someone and help them most of the time, all day every day, is both physically and mentally tiring. I don't begrudge it one little bit, I can't do enough for the woman who has done so much for me all my life and never asked for anything in return. It's just a shock to the system when it all comes about so suddenly. Three months ago, we were blissfully unaware of her diagnosis and were trecking around the Isle of Wight with her, climbing castles and walking along beach promenades, visiting old haunts we'd holidayed at when I was a small child.

It's all very sad but I guess such things come to us all eventually. I just hope when it comes to me, it comes quick and is over quicker.

It's now half an hour since Mum went to X-Ray, it's 9pm,i have no idea when she'll finally get back and then be allocated a bed for the night on a ward. I haven't eaten since about 1pm and I was up at 4am to go up to London to squeeze 4 hours of work in to earn some money before returning to Kent (where Mum is currently living with us) to then take her over to East London to hospital for her 2pm appointment. It's been a bit of a day, this Day 1!

But hey, it could be worse. I could be 94 and having chemotherapy for Multiple Myeloma. So wind your neck in sunshine and crack on!

Peace x

Perspective

I debated a fair bit with myself over the point of this posting, it's a tough thing to put onto paper and something I'd hoped would never be necessary. I ended up doing it because I sometimes find that writing stuff down helps my mind deal with stuff. I talk to my nearest and dearest obviously but I'm not always good at getting my emotions out. Those that know me well enough know I can let my emotions get the better of me sometimes and cloud my judgement. I think writing stuff down helps you speak with a more measured mind and helps me unload it all. Anyway that's enough of that.

I had a long weekend in Cornwall last week and it was an idyllic four days, spent in the wonderful Cornish countryside with my lovely Cornish wife and some great friends. Away from the madness of working on the roads of London and the general hubbub and stresses of daily life, it was a real soul cleanser and allowed me a brief relaxation of mind and body.

That temporary respite was somewhat dented on my return when a high court judge ruled in favour of my beloved Uber, allowing them to continue making life a misery for us London cabbies (see my previous postings on this issue). Highs and lows eh.

As a certain Forrest Gump once said, life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get (or words to that effect). Although I tend to favour a bag of maltesers so I tend to know exactly what I'm going to get, but you take my point.

I'm generally a happy chap and am content with my lot in life, I've had my share of difficulties, haven't we all. It's a bit of a struggle financially and I stress about it from time to time but I've learned to keep a sense of perspective and that whole mantra of there being a lot of people worse off than yourself helps me to get to grips with things. Mostly. Career wise, I've made some odd choices and it hasn't always gone to plan but again, it could be worse and as long as I can pay the bills I'm happy enough. As I've got older I've become less obsessed with material belongings (cars, holidays etc) and, asset wise, I own pretty much nothing (apart from a pension). I'd be worth a fair amount if I was 6 feet under!

All of this sense of perspective has been brought into sharp focus in the last week or so when, after a series of tests and hospital visits, my 94 year old, fit as a 50 year old Mum, was diagnosed with cancer. To be precise, it is Myeloma which is a cancer of the bone marrow. It's not curable but it is treatable with chemotherapy and normally a person of my Mum's age would not be offered such treatment given how relatively healthy you need to be to withstand the treatment to start with plus the impact the side effects can have on one's health. However my Mum is no ordinary 94 year old, the consultant said in his entire career he'd never encountered anyone of her age in such a good state of physical health (she was still going to Keep Fit once a week up until about a month ago). As such they are able to offer her a couple of treatment options, both involving chemotherapy. One of these options is more aggressive than the other but is more effective in terms of reducing the cancer and, given the level of cancer she has, will probably offer a better longer term outcome (not sure what "long term" means for someone her age, but I'd rather not think of that at this stage to be honest).

So, despite her understandable indecision in the face of a mountain of information and no actual information on prognosis (outcomes are very much different from one person to the next in such instances), my Mum very bravely decided to go for the most aggressive option, in the knowledge of the probable side effects this will entail. I'm bordering on tears just thinking of the look on her face when the doctor ran through the possible/probable side effects during our consultation and to think that despite all that she found the strength in her tiny body and her fragile state of mind to go down this road is just simply awesome. I'm not sure I could do that, I suspect I'd just throw in the towel. But she's from a different generation to me, a generation that lived through a World War, left school at a young age to go out to work for pennies and had to fight and scrap for every morsel put on the dinner table. This is a woman who lost a finger working in a munitions factory during WW2 and was blown across a room in an office in Reading from a German bomber unloading his unused payload on return to his Motherland after a bombing raid on this country. So a bit of cancer isn't going to beat her resolve. It certainly puts my daily gripes into perspective.

So the next year to 18 months will be spent on weekly hospital visits for her treatment. I really can't get my head around how my Mum will cope with this but she understands, as do all of us in the family, that this treatment is necessary to try and relieve her of the ill that is going on in her body. I'm close to tears a fair bit of the time thinking about it, as I imagine both my brothers probably are, but this is a time to remember it's her that has to go through all this treatment, not me.

About 18 months ago my dear sister in law was diagnosed with the same condition and has spent the last year or so undergoing similar treatment as my Mum faces now. The treatment she had was of an even stronger nature, something afforded to someone of a much younger age than Mum. She is now in remission but, due to the nature of her treatment (she was part of a trial of a new kind of programme), she still faces weekly hospital visits for chemotherapy. I've seen how she's suffered but has been so brave in facing it all down. It's quite inspiring and whilst it's been horrendous for her and my brother, I hope my Mum can draw some inspiration from it too.

Many people have been touched by this awful illness in their families. Up until 18 months ago when my sister in law was diagnosed I'd been fortunate enough not to have been similarly touched in my immediate family. Now two of my closest loved ones are fighting it. I can't even imagine how my brother is feeling right now having gone through what he has with his wife and now faces similar with his Mum. But he's a tough old nut, he doesn't give much away.

Anyway, I decided to go ahead and write about this, for my own benefit really as much as anything else and I hope to post updates on her journey on here. I'm convinced it'll be a story with a happy ending.

So if anyone at Buckingham Palace is reading this, keep that ink pot topped up and the telegram machine stocked with paper.

Mum starts her treatment next week.