I feel fed up. I failed my driving test again yesterday. I was in such a blind panic I just couldn’t concentrate. Kathryn got back from work at about 12:20 and my driving test wasn’t until 14:00. Somehow at 13:30 we were driving back to our house to pick up the paper bit of my driving licence and the other documentation I’d forgotten. At 13:40 I was attempting to find a garage to put some fuel in my car! At 13:50 I was still looking for the test centre in Heysham, despite having been there once before. By the time I actually made it to my test was in a complete unprepaired flap! It was a complete miracle that I made it there at all. I wasn’t really suprised that I failed.

It’s just frustrating ’cause I know that I often drive at test standard for a couple of hours at a time. When it comes to actually doing it in test conditions I fall to pieces. Who would have thought it! Damon suffering from “performance shyness”!

I’ve just spoken to my dear friend Cassie and she told me that she shouldn’t have passed but her examiner passed her anyway. Seemingly due to her inability to distinguish left from right! This has cheered me up a little.

I will work on making sure that I am suitably prepared next time and if there is any justice it will be third time lucky!

The idea that someone is so desperately unhappy that they successfully commit suicide whilst imprisoned is an unpleasent one and raises questions about the of acceptability of imprisonment as a form of punishment. When you consider that those held in Guantanamo have not yet being convicted of a crime, being given a fair and open trial or had access to independent judges or lawyers, it angers me that the anyone could attempt to suggest that this is “act of war”!

Two Saudis and a Yemeni were “committed” and had killed themselves in “an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us”. They committed suicide for christ’s sake!?!? How on earth can that be construed as an act of warfare? You think I’m quoting out of context maybe?

Rear Adm Harris said he did not believe the men had killed themselves out of despair. “They are smart. They are creative, they are committed,” he said. “They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warface waged against us.”

BBC News Article: Guantanamo suicides ‘acts of war’

I mean does the American military that be really believe that or alternatively do they believe I’m stupid enough to believe them when they say it? I’m not sure which is worse. (more…)

My entirely pointless and unproductive hiatus is over.

Officially started trading as Telesales Solutions Today! At least as far as the Inland Revenue are concerned cause they use the nearest Sunday which seems a little odd.

Read more about my new business here: http://www.telesales-solutions.com/.

If you want to build a ship,
don’t drum up people together to collect wood
and don’t assign them tasks and work,
but rather teach them to long for
the endless immensity of the sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I have a headache, I’ve only had a few hours sleep, I’m dehydrated, and a little fed up. Why did I go and do that again? I’ve gotten drunk 3 times in 3 years. I suspect that was my last time. It’s not big and it’s not clever. I’m not entirely sure I like who I am when I drink. There are small elements I prefer, I have insane levels of confidence, I feel brash, etc. but there are much larger downsides. I am a bit of a plonker, worse I’m not very nice to people. I hereby resolve not to drink alcohol again at least for 12 months.

Yesterday I visited Richard Aspden (Microchip) in Nelson. We drove, (with me at the helm – I hasten to add) and my able-bodied co-pilot (bringer of sanity and beach boys) one David Keysell (Snowball), from Lancaster to Nelson and back again. All might have been smooth and easy were it not for the fact that not having passed my driving test yet I was forced to do the journey via road. Lancaster to Nelson with no motorways! Which is harder than you might think!

Our outbound journey looked a little like this: We drove from Lancaster out to Quernmore, down to Forton, down to Bay Horse, and onto the A6 at Barton, down a little way and then right at Broughton, through Goosnargh, Longridge across and up to Knowle Green, sailing past Hurst Green and Great Mitton, and then down to Whalley, Read, and Simonstone, and it was only when we reached Padiham that everything went truly wrong.

All of the directions we had care of http://www.multimap.co.uk/ and by way of road signs we could see pointed to Nelson but sooner or later terminated at one junction or another for the M65! They would start off as White Signs suggesting a non motorway road, and mysteriously change to blue motorway signs for the M65 before your eyes. Whichever way you turned. I suspect I would feel less bitter about this had I not made us drive right towards that first white sign for Nelson when Dave suggested we should in fact be turning right!

Having circled around Burnley a few times we eventually succeeded in finding our way back onto the A6068 and arrived in Nelson. We set off at 2pm and didn’t arrive until about 17:20.

I think having had such fun getting there I was determined to have an alternative return route. So on the way back we went from Nelson to Colne, up to Barnoldswick across on a toilet track to Bracewell, then made a huge tactical error and drove to Skipton, although from Skipton we succeeded in finding the A65 and travelling up through Gargrave and Long Preston we eventually arrived in Settle.

The A65 road was smaller and narrower than I remembered, I had visions of a big multi-lane dual carriageway. By now it was 21:30. We were travelling through the pitch black, in torrential rain, a thick blanket of fog had descended, and much of the road was flooded. I had the windscreen wipers on the fiercest setting and it was only just managing to divert the buckets of rain that dashed my windscreen. Each time the car went cutting through one of the deep puddles (the word seems inadequate – ponds perhaps would be more appropriate) that spanned the road, the electrics in the car would become less than reliable. My battery light would flash along with my warning light, this would be accompanied with the smell of burning rubber, and suddenly the power assisted brakes were mostly chocolate teapots. Sometimes the car skidded and sometimes it did not. The lights did not completely flash on and off… they sort of strobed like we were about to be abducted, although I suspect the UFOs were put off by the weather!

We passed through Giggleswick (I have to mention it cause I like the name so much) on to Clapham and then finally we were at Ingleton. We turned right onto the A687 and travelled west to Burton in Lonsdale, Hornby (where Katie and I once set off in a Hot Air Balloon) down to Caton and then finally back into Lancaster! We arrived at about 11pm. All in all it was very “Special”!

When on Thursday I started getting headaches when I used my mobile phone I became worried, by Saturday morning I had a host of symptoms and was starting to be frightened for my long-term health. Read more about this in Part 3 if you’ve not already.

By three o’clock my eye had gotten much worse. It was extremely bloodshot with one particular area of my eye looking as though it had been damaged in some way. There was a partial ring of bloodshot vessels surrounding 20% of the circumference of my iris. When I looked in the mirror I could see an off white bubble just next to the most bloodshot part of my eye, a disfiguration of my actual iris. I was horrified. The familiar circle of my iris looked as though it had had a tiny circular bite taken out of it. I couldn’t quite believe what was happening to me. Not only had my eye become terribly painful and watery, it was accompanied with an unpleasant scrapping sensation with white hot pin prick pain every time I closed my eye lid or blinked.

Whilst looking in the mirror, I realised what the horrible scrapping sensation I’d been experiencing was (which I must reitterate was now excruciatingly painful). Every time I closed my eye I could feel my eye lid scrapping over the bubble and it made my eye water like mad. It was so raised that it was actually scraping against my eyelid now. Not only did my eyeball have a dull throbbing ache but at the point where the bubble was it hurt with a sharp stabbing pain.

By this point I was pretty much convinced I’d got some kind of Cancer of the Eye. More Google Research didn’t help:

• Adult Eye Cancer – [Link Now Dead]
• Eye Melanoma – [Link Now Dead]

I attempted to contact the out of hours Doctor via the emergency number but there was a queue and I still felt it might wait until Monday. I think I was just frightened by then and attempting to put it off. So I rang NHS Direct to ask their advice and they told me in no uncertain terms to go to Casualty. I went directly to the Accident & Emergency Department at the local hospital, the Royal Lancaster Infirmary (RLI). Read more about my experiences at RLI in Part 5.

More Background to the events that culminated in my trip to A&E last Saturday. If you have already read Part 2 (including The Report on lens damage) you’ll be able to see why when I started getting headaches whenever I used my mobile phone I became worried.

I was starting to think maybe I had dropped my mobile phone and damaged it, somehow causing it to give off more radiation than I could cope with. It seemed unbelievable but I could think of no other explanation.

Each time I took a phone call on my phone my eye would indeed water. I could almost feel it bubbling in the heat that my phone was giving off. At first I told myself it was just psychosomatic. Which clearly made my pain and discomfort all Snowball’s fault for putting the idea in my head.

However the more time passed and the worse my symptoms got the more I started to consider the worst. A whole phantasmagoria of possible ailments and horrific health conditions swam through my head as increasingly distinct possibilities. All I can say to you is: “Never ever Google your symptoms if you are feeling unwell!”

I believe it started on Thursday and by this point (Saturday morning) I had:

• a persistent minor headache all the time specifically focused on the left of my head;
• a severe headache (lasting about two hours) following any use of my phone (even just a 20-30 second call);
• my left ear ached, and my inner ear hole was very sore and tender to the touch;
• my left eye was becoming increasingly bloodshot and sore;

By three o’clock things had gotten much worse. Continued in Part 4.

More Background to the events that culminated in my trip to A&E last Saturday, and following on from Part 1.

Snowball (Dave) has been talking to me about the perils of mobile phone usage for a long time. He has most recently been quoting a study which proposed eyeball bubbling!

Rapport Faculty of Medicine’s Research

So now every time I ring Snowball he taunts me. “Is your eye watering?” He says at the beginning of the call for no apparent reason. He talks about the exhibition we attended for a bit, and then he does it again. “Is your eye getting hot?” Again I ignore him and we continue. “Can you feel it bubbling?” He is ringing me on my mobile from his landline and thus it entertains him to remind me of the dangers. I acknowledge that my ear feels hot and we agree to carry on our phone conversation in person.

On Thursday it got markedly worse and I realised something was wrong. Continued in Part 3.