6th & 7th May ‘Hanging on the telephone’ or ‘And they cried with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge… them that dwell on the earth?”’ (Rev 6.10)

 

6th & 7th May ‘Hanging on the telephone’ or ‘And they cried with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge… them that dwell on the earth?”’ (Rev 6.10)

These few days have been anxious, and the past two reminiscent of days long past. 

The anxiety has been largely perpetuated by sleep deprivation. The dark hours of the night have been accompanied by an over-active imagination, and Sarah’s vocal versatility on the snoring front. Neither element I suspect is new, but both elements achieved their apotheosis during this week.

Bizarrely, Alexander was extolling the merits of Macbeth on Monday evening, but I had no idea that words of the ‘Scottish Play’ would haunt me throughout the week:   

“Still it cried, ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house: ‘Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, - Macbeth shall sleep no more”. 

The foreboding nature of that play should have been a portent of what followed, as Monday’s storm meant that strategically placed buckets were required for our bedroom as the rain came in – nothing exacerbates a sense of self-pity more than rain dripping on your head at midnight in bed. Izzy, Ben and Sarah immediately sprang into action and I was treated to a homage to the Three Stooges as buckets and people banged into one another. Calm was restored and I fell asleep.

Sarah call me Glamis Chapman soon murder’d my sleep with the least-welcomed-metaphor-ever as, bathed in darkness, she kicked the bucket across the bedroom. I awoke with a fright and pondered for the next few hours what this paradox might mean?

That night was the beginning of many nights where sleep was anything but a bed-fellow. This situation brought back feelings from a time long gone; the teenage years.

Like most (every?) teenager I spent a ludicrous amount of time with over-analysis. Usually this involved thinking and re-thinking over the body language and snippets of conversations from a girl I had feelings for that week. What did she mean when she said she “liked me”?  When and how would “see you soon” be realised? These, and endless other pointless questions, entertained my grey-matter rather more than my O-Level syllabus. 

However, two other aspects came to the fore from the days when one pimple felt like a hideous disfigurement, and hence becoming a hermit was the only career choice, as no girl would ever look at me. They were time and telephones.

Never has a week gone so slowly as last week. Time seemed to drag out like the moments when waiting for a date by the Lions in Nottingham’s Slab Square. In those days I, along with other acned youths, paced around the statues looking constantly at our watches filling the air with the heady mixture of Brut 33, Old Spice, Hai Karate and Denim (“for the man who doesn’t have to try too hard”). The only consolation being that we didn’t have to roll up our sleeves to check watches as the influence of Miami Vice had negated that need. This week felt like those pastel-coloured days. Tick-tok, tick-tok, tick-tok…   

We live in amazing technological times. We have smart phones, Skype, Facetime, texting, and COVID’s favourite vehicle for communication, Zoom. The idea of not being in contact is completely alien. Yet the 6th and 7th May transported me back to a time of sitting at the foot of the stairs waiting for the phone to ring, the only background sound being the faint strains of Spandau Ballet and loud cries of my mother commanding me – on pain of death – not to use the telephone until after 7pm. It seems almost impossible to imagine waiting for the phone to ring and being unable to contact someone, yet I have spent two days staring at my landline phone and mobile phone, and occasionally picking them up and ringing the hospital. 

(As an aside, if I hear the phrase any time soon, “If you’re ringing about COVID or you have symptoms…” I will scream…).  

Anyway, at 3pm on the 7th of May the waiting was over, the mobile rang and flashed the words I longed to see: ‘No Caller ID’. The surgeon who promised he’d ring yesterday was now ringing today.

The results are in: liver “normal”, and I have some form of lymphoma which will require chemotherapy, but not the promised disembowelling of the early days! Of all the possible options this has to be, and feels like, the best. For the first time in what has felt like years, but is only days, I felt relief, peace and joy. 

Of course, the journey will continue, and no promises are being made, but hopefully the longed-for roadmap will be a little less pot-holed. Sharing this with friends was joy despite their questions concerning the accuracy of the liver assessment; chin-chin, salute and cheers!