5 Lobes & 2 Fissures

Catch up

2011-03-13T21:21:00.003Z

Some of you will know, and some of you will not know what has been going on with me recently. The long and short of it is that I've received a diagnosis that finally makes sense of the eccentricities of my body. (If you're interested it's Hypermobility Syndrome, which may or may not - depending on who you talk to - be a subtype of Ehler-Danlos Syndrome. I'd recommend searching for HMSA if you want some sensible information...)

The last few months I've been trying to figure out how fatigue, mobility impairments and chronic pain fit with med school. They are not easy bed fellows, but I'm working with the university to try and figure it out.

Those of you I've not been in touch with recently, this is probably why. It's taking some time. The NHS is not an easy machine to deal with about such things, either as a patient or as a future employee, and this situation is endlessly frustrating. BUT, progress is being made slowly but surely, and I have had some wonderful people making the journey with me.

Anyway, that's not why I'm posting. I'm posting because I've just bought my first walking stick. It is pink and red and stripy and shiny and beautiful! But it has brought to mind this post that Catriona wrote. In that spirit, here are my rules about my stick. (She needs a name, any suggestions?) Please bear in mind that what's ok for me might not be ok for someone else...

Feel free to say :
- It's beautiful! Where did you get it?
- How are you getting on with it?
- It matches your scarf / boots / dress
- Stop poking me!

Please don't say :
- What's wrong with you? *
- You're too young to need that!
- Won't it weird your patients out?
- You're holding it wrong

* You all (now) know why I'm using the stick, but for reference I wouldn't mind someone asking "why is it that you're using a stick?". S'long as it doesn't come out of the blue. Compliment it first, a little flattery with get you anywhere ;)

2011-03-10T19:01:00.002Z

Sometimes I think about you. About what it was like to hold your hand as you were dying, praying that your daughter would take my place before you were gone. I still know your name - it's been three years, I don't think I'll ever forget it. I wonder what happened to your family - the end of a story is never the end of the story. Knowing that I only ever get a glimpse gives me some hope. You have to find a way to stay detached, and that is mine. But I still remember.

Are you listening? (SCM conference 2011)

2011-02-08T22:22:00.003Z

This is the closing reflection I wrote for this year's SCM conference 'Still Small Voice'. For context, our readings were Isaiah 58: 1-12, Psalm 46 and Matthew 5:13-16. I don't know how much I was thinking about the readings when I wrote it, but I might've been... Mostly I was thinking about the conversations I'd had over the weekend and the stuff that had been on my mind recently.

Please also go here and read Lizzie's poem called 'where is my Church?'.

Are you listening?

Our country treats asylum seekers like criminal suspects
- are you listening?
2 million people die every year from diseases caused by dirty water
- are you listening?
Since the end of World War 2 there has been less than half an hour of world peace
- are you listening?
Politicians keep breaking their promises
- are you listening?
We are poisoning the planet and we can't agree how to stop
- are you listening?

Communities are coming together to demand a living wage for all
- are you listening?
Students, and disabled people and unions and many others are speaking out against cuts
- are you listening?
Churches are reaching out to refugees, offering fellowship and welcome
- are you listening?
Countries and charities respond with money, food, clothes, doctors in the face of natural disaster
- are you listening?

Amid the clamour of deprivation, injustice, violence, illness, destruction and lies
- listen...

...can you hear it?

Listen for the whisper,
listen for the song,
listen for the sobs,
listen for the shout
- listen for God's Word.

Listen.

Listen for a while,
then find your place in the choir
and join the song.

George Walsh, 2011

One Month Before Heartbreak

2011-01-15T22:25:00.001Z

Friday marks 1 month until the end of the public consultation on proposed changes to the DLA (Disability Living Allowance). This is my small contribution to a blog swarm calling for these changes to be reconsidered. Other entries can be found at the One Month Before Heartbreak blog. Please go and read it, share the link. If I have learnt anything in my life it is (in the immortal words of High School Musical) we’re all in this together. We need to stick up for each other. Every time I see #solidarity on twitter, I breathe a prayer... “first they came for the communists”.

If I need a special reason to care about these cuts to DLA it would be this : I am disabled. It’s not something I particularly enjoy talking about, but there it is. I have no nifty name for it yet – whatever the ‘it’ is that’s slowly ruining my joints and my autonomic nervous system. I have no name for the ‘it’ that is slowly eroding my independence, but it is there, and it costs money.

I’m doing ok for now. My parents support me financially, my partner gives me the practical day-to-day help that I need and I can make it into uni most of the time – whether or not that leaves me with energy / painfree hours to study, cook, clean etc is another thing entirely. DLA payments would give me some of my independence back, but now there’s no point. Not until this gets sorted out. It’s far too much of a song and dance to go through for nothing.

I do not need to tell you all, again, in how many different ways these cuts will affect us. Nor do I need to remind you that we could probably find a good deal of that money if people would only pay their damn taxes. That these cuts are inhumane, ill-targeted and exploitative is clear; what makes it worse is that the system desperately needed reform – just not like this.

We live in a society where bogus has been synonymous with asylum seeker, where disabled people are trying it on - for money or sympathy or to park slightly closer to the supermarket. Everyone’s motives have to be questioned, noone can be trusted, scepticism becomes self-defence. Even if we could reverse the cuts, right now, today – what would we be left with?

Something needs to change – just not like this.

New Term

2011-01-14T17:19:00.002Z

We've just reached the end of week 2 of the longest term of my life. A 25-weeker. So, if you want me, you'll have to come to Glasgow for the weekend, oui?

The 5-week block I'm in just now is another one that I chose myself, with a less clinical inclination than the last (homeless) one. It's called International Primary Care and Tropical Health. During this block we have input from various group and lecturers, and a lot of time to think, the outcome of which is an essay on the (medical) subject of our choice. I also have to give a presentation about toilets to a roomful of doctors. It's going to be fun I think.

Still, loyal readers, I need your help. I have some idea of what I want my essay to be about, but I can't quite define it in a concrete fashion - certainly not in a pithy enough way to form a title. Well maybe a title, but not the all important tells-you-what-it's-actually-about subtitle.

It all kind of centres around this quote (which I believe to be taken from the Medical Foundation for the care of victims of torture website, but it's not directly attributed in the handout I have) :

It is tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal esire to hear and speak no evil.

The victim on the contrary asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim of torture demands action, engagement and remembering.

It also kind of meanders along the path about the impact our disposible medical culture has on the planet (the health sequalae of climate change having been well-documented, for example here by the WHO).

Plus I've thinking about the Hippocratic Oath. When we promise to care for our patients, does that not include our future patients. And how are we supposed to know who they will be? And when we promise to prevent disease, how far does that promise take us?

Do we have extra obligations to those of everyone else? Probably not. Should we have a keener appreciation of them? Maybe.

So gang : can anyone think of a question that encompasses those things, and other things which I'll get to read up on interesting stuff about?

2011-01-06T17:11:00.003Z

I'm having one of those days where I wonder where I'm going to find time for uni starting again... My day is currently so perfectly full of sleeping, cooking, eating, the occassional bit of tidying, crafting, reading, messing around on the internet, listening to Agatha Christie audiobooks, napping, pottering around and gazing off into the distance, that I wonder where on earth the extra time will come from. Sometimes I think med school was an ill-advised decision... Contemplating the fact that we'll now have no time off until the end of July is one of those times.

In other news, big hoodies, baggy joggers and ski socks were made for snuggling in front of the fire on chilly Glasgow evenings. I'm going to go and put Miss Marple on, crank up the fire, potter around my room and do the occassional bit of tidying. Yum.

Vegan Christmas

2010-12-24T13:13:00.002Z

I've been asked, oh so many times, and here's the answer. How does a vegan Christmas work?

Firstly, *gasp*, no turkey.

In the Walsh household it shall be thus :

Starter
Asparagus tartlets. Yup, seriously...how posh! My mother is making these.

Main
Stuffed mushrooms, slow-cooked red cabbage, roast potatoes, mixed root veg mash, lovely sprouts, mustard/maple syrup LM sausages. Yum.

Pudding
We were super organised this year, and so we will have a homemade vegan Christmas pudding, and soy brandy cream. =]

My tummy is excited! Hooray! Also looking forward to a sly vegan cocktail or two...

To follow up, on Christmas day II with my dad, there will be chestnut and mushroom pie, with leftover many veg from Christmas day I.

On a less food-related note, here is a Christmas Eve compline that I wrote at some point.

I hope you can all find a hint of peace tomorrow, no matter what your Christmas looks like.

Can I just say...

2010-11-19T22:57:00.004Z

... [something inappropriate along the lines of 'oh, goodness!']

I am completely in love with Nigel Slater, this recipe for honey-mustard sausage and mash, and...well Holly, naturally.

Vegan modifications are easy with the lovely Nige (yeah, I feel like we're on those kind of terms right about now) 's recipes - because he's so amazingly in love with vegetables. As of course am I.

So, I made this vegan goodness as follows :

Take 6 LM sausages (which, incidentally are on £1 offer in Sainsbury's at the mo), and 4 parsnips stick-ed and parboiled. Put them in a nice big roasting tin. Drizzle with the dressing. Pop in the oven. Turn after about 10 minutes and add half moons of red onion. Cook for another 15-ish minutes. At whatever temperature it says in ol' Nige's recipe.

While that's happening, chop up whatever root veg are left from last week's veg box. In this case it was about 6 small-ish potatoes, a couple of decidedly worse for wear carrots, and a swede (of the root veg variety). Boil. Mash with butter, S+P, and (although we didn't have any), I think a bit of chopped fresh coriander would add a certain je ne sais quoi...

Serve together. By this point the dressing and veggies will have caramelised and just really become amazing.

Ideally serve before half 10. Although if you are a couple of medics at the end of a week of placement, this might not be realistic. Totally worth the wait =]

2010-11-05T14:21:00.002Z

And it's the last day- I can't believe it! I'm sitting in the health centre in westown working on my essay.

I had been *really* stressed about my essay until yesterday (it's about barriers to accessing healthcare in the homeless population). I felt like I was drowning in it's 4000+ words. It wasn't very good, and I didn't know how to make it better, or cut down words, or make it flow, or anything. I showed a draft to my supervisor here, and she gave me some very useful constructive criticism. I started again from the beginning (obviously not throwing out all the work I'd done for the first draft, but re-structured and re-focussed) and it's now a much more manageable 3000 words, far less dense, and actually sounds like I've spent the last 5 weeks on placement and not reading journals. Much better. I am very bad at accepting criticism normally (mostly when I secretly know it's right), so I was quite proud of myself yesterday for actually accepting and taking on board the criticism. I think it helped that my supervisor was very lovely about it.

I'm here for the rest of the afternoon and then I'm hopping (well hopping as much as you can when you have 5 weeks worth of stuff in your backpack) on the train to Birmingham for Shared Planet. SCM is running a workshop on Spirituality and Activism. Plus I get to see the lovely Holly, and the wonderful Lizzie (as well as the equally lovely and wonderful Charlotte and Hilary, and possibly even the delightful Tim). Yay =]

And then on Sunday night I'll be hommmmmmmmme. I can't wait! My next block (General Practice) starts on Tuesday after a day full of pharmacology and radiology on Monday. And then on Wednesday I'm going to see Rocky Horror. Quite when I'm going to sleep I'm not sure!

Glasgow folk : I miss you a lot, and I'll see you soon!

2010-10-31T19:29:00.002Z

Sorry for managing to not post at all from midtown. It was good, and I'll probably blather about it at some point, but for now I'm back in westown for the final week. I'm looking forward to getting home =]

2010-10-17T16:25:00.002+01:00

So, after a busy old week in westown, I am now safely installed in my new digs near midtown, via a weekend in London with my mum and Coralie =]

I had a great couple of weeks in westown and I'm looking forward to going back to round things off for the last week of the block. I'm slightly nervous about starting the new placement tomorrow, not least because they haven't been in touch, so I don't know what time they're expecting me. Also, it has the potential to be a little awkward, because placement is a wee way away from where I'm staying, and the downstairs of this building is locked overnight, so I can't get out before a certain time, but clinics seem to start pretty early. Rar.

Also, I've just discovered that I've been a prize idiot and left all but two of my tops in London, having washed them. Rude words. I remember taking them off the hangers - so either I've imagined it, or I've folded them up and just not packed them. Either way, rude words. I wish I could see this as a joyful excuse to buy new clothes, but I hate shopping, so pfft.

2010-10-12T21:06:00.003+01:00

I had a busy yesterday. I've done four shifts of outreach over three working nights. This morning I arrived back at westown station, 9 hours after I left las night. The commute from there's an hour each way, so not much sleep was had in georgeland yesterday.

I'm finding myself really frustrated - not by staff or service users/patients - but by the infrastructure and systems surrounding them. Not even at a local level. Just your bog standard 'why can the NHS not manage to find a secure way of having a complete computer record of each patient's history, with appropriate sections accessible to appropriate people, with limited input access to associated health and social support services?' rant, combined with the 'why can westown homeless GP not register patients, which would allow them to have access to the patient's previous notes?' combined with 'why are people such shits to each other that people end up in the state that I've seen people in today?'.

It's on days like this that it's hard to leave work at work. Especially when I've not much to do in the evenings down here aside from brewing.

This is one of the things about being a student, moving around from placement to placement. You can't get properly stuck into dealing with a certain patient, or thinking about a certain issue within a team, because by the time you find your feet a bit, it's time to move on. There's still a couple of patients from my last placement that I'm not worried about, so much as thinking about occassionally. Wondering about. Just have to keep reminding myself that nothing - not response to treatment, not death, not discharge from hospital, not referral to specialists - is the end of a patient's story. You just don't get that storybook conclusion. Would be nice though, sometimes. I suppose I'll get used to this more over these two years of placement.

I'm really tired today. It aggravates my natural tendency to world weariness. Not world weariness I suppose. Frustration with the status quo, potential for things to be better, but no idea of how to get there, realistically. World overwhelmed-ness. I need Spooks and bed.

2010-10-10T22:57:00.003+01:00

Fairly quiet weekend, but I'm knackered. Think it's just a busy week catching up with me. Hope I'm not coming down with something. It is about the time for the new-place-new-germs cold that seems to have become the routine when travelling / changing placement.

Friday night was good. Busy, which is always better than deathly quiet. Had some time with my grandparents this weekend, which was quite nice.

Things have taken a bad turn. I laughed 4 times during Countryfile. I'm getting old.

2010-10-08T12:55:00.002+01:00

My grandma got her veggie peeler when she was 14 to put in her "bottom drawer". 70 years later and it helped me massacre a butternut squash with ease. Amazing.

Enoying a day off today - I don't start work until 8pm - which is quite nice. Just spent an hour chatting to the grandparentals about how they got together. It appeals to the old romantic lurking somewhere deep within me...

My grandad joined the navy at 16 (1940). A couple of years later he was on leave, and went down to Sussex to see his cousin, who said to him "I'm glad you're here - I've got something to show you". That something turned out to be my 16-year-old grandma (she was not impressed with that description) and that was the first time they met. They started writing to each other, and finally, nearly a year after the war had ended in Europe, my grandad got to come home.

My grandma was working for a dressmaking factory in London, and my grandad was working 24 hours on, 24 hours off at Chatham dockyard. He would come and call for her every other day, and the landlady (in her female-only boarding house) would lock him in the sitting room while she went to fetch my grandma.

When she was 23, they were married. And that veggie peeler was brought out, dusted off and put to work.

2010-10-07T21:29:00.002+01:00

So I was out with an outreach bus tonight. Mobile needle exchange / drug harm minimisation advice etc. It was pretty cool. Lovely folk. I learnt some stuff and heard some stories. Some really horrendous overdose stories. They're doing overdose awareness / naloxone training with hostel residents at the minute. It's a great idea, and it seems to be going down well with the residents, which is even better.

Now I'm sitting in bed, on the phone to the missis, eating pistachios and dark chocolate buttons. I don't have to go in until lunch! (But then I don't finish until midnight...you take the ups and downs)

Who are you?

2010-10-05T23:19:00.003+01:00

p.s. I'm curious (because blogger now has blog stats so I can see that I seem to have regular readers in China, Canada and the USA, besides UK and France/Switzerland, which I can explain) can you leave me a comment if you read this thing? I know that I blog stalk people I haven't seen in years / have never met, so I'm just curious if there's anyone hovering in the background who I don't know about. Say hi =]

2010-10-05T21:41:00.003+01:00

Another busy day in westown. Getting to grips with all the delights and challenges of any specialist service.

Westown council recently conducted a headcount from which they concluded that there are only 2 rough sleepers in the whole town. (Rough sleepers being your stereotypical homeless individuals - who are literally sleeping out, and not in a hostel/BandB, staying in a friend's house etc) This can therefore be there arguement the next time they decide services need to be cut back.

I met 15 rough sleepers before 10am this morning. All of whom are staying in westown. The disparity comes because headcounters only go out to certain places, they only count people they can see (and a shop doorway is *really* not the best place to crash, if you have to sleep out), and only people who are lying down, on the floor (not on a bench even) and asleep. Such nonsense.

So that's a whole segment of the homeless population discounted, before you even get to the 'hidden homeless' - people who are staying with friends etc.

2 days and I'm already incredibly frustrated. But the people I'm working with are great. They care a lot about their patients and clients, and they put themselves out to help them. Plus it's a fun team to be a part of - very informal, which means I get to chip in, help out etc, which makes the days go much faster!

I've booked a youth hostel for Friday night because my working day won't finish until 1am - I'm going out with the street worker outreach bus. It sounds pretty interesting, and also (if I'm honest, which I try to be...) kind of scary. Not any quantifiable way. Just a bit I-don't-know-what-to-expect + bad-part-of-town.

2010-10-04T23:11:00.003+01:00

Taking blood is one of the fun things about being a medical student. It's an actual procedure (all be it a teeny tiny one) and you get to do it all by yourself!

It's easy the old-fashioned way - needle and syringe - provided the patient isn't a wee old lady with veins that wibble wobble all over the place.

But they have these weird bottles now - you've probably seen them - called vacuettes. The wee blood bottles (with different coloured tops) that have a vacuum inside them, so that when you plug them in (technical term) to your arm (or wherever) the negative pressure's ready and waiting without you having to pull on the end of the syringe.

All well and good. But they have one major design flaw. No flashback. The flashback is the little hint of blood that you see at the bottom of a needle, which lets you know you're in the vein. These vacuette needles are opaque plastic, so that is obscured.

When I said they had one major design flaw, I meant they have two. The second is that each time you change the bottle to get blood for a different test you have to press it on to the back of the needle - enough that you break the seal on the bottle, but not so much (and this is the trickytrickytricky bit) that you push the needle out of the vein again.

So, this is a long way of saying 'vacuettes are a giant pain in the arse'. I much prefer needle and syringe. But, outside of a hospital, it's pretty hard to find a bog standard needle and syringe. So you're stuck with vacuettes.

Before today, I had never successfully drawn blood with a vacuette (except by using the speical extension tubes 'butterflies' that eliminate both of the aforementioned problems).

Today I did. With a little help from my patient.

"You'll want that tourniquet a little tighter. That's it. Here, I found you a nice straight vein, that's in, there you go. Don't knock the needle out. Hey doctor, this one can stay around she got a stick first time!"

There are very few benefits to intravenous drug use. Apparently teaching med students venupuncture is one of them...

2010-10-04T21:39:00.003+01:00

I was really sad to miss church yesterday. I got to go and say hi to people before I got on the train to westown but I missed the service. And it sounded really lovely (see here for Catriona's post on it). I was especially sad to miss communion. On a good day, nothing makes me feel more connected to a group of people*.

This afternoon I was at the westown outreach clinic for female street sex workers (and yes, that is the PC term in this part of the world, as in Edinburgh - in Glasgow it's still prostitute). It's a lovely wee centre, tucked away in a nasty part of town. Everyone was really friendly, I was offered tea three times within as many minutes of arriving, which is always a good sign on placement!

One of the things, I'm rapidly coming to learn, about working with the homeless population is that (for many and varied reasons) they tend not to have seen a doctor in quite a while. This means consultations tend to be slightly longer and more complext than your average GP 5 minuter.

We'd just got to the end of one such slightly convoluted conversation with one of the clients, and "stolen" 4 bottles of her blood for testing. She got a bit woozy, so the doctor pulled a slice of cake out of her handbag, unwrapped it, broke it in three, and gave a piece to each of us.

And from nowhere, the voice of my childhood minister popped into my head

Though we are many, we are one body - for we all share in the one loaf.

So we sat and ate our cake, and drank our tea, and chatted away. I learnt a lot today (and not just from the mind exploding drug project leaflet about the relative merits/safety of intravenous vs anal administration of heroin...)

*I will reserve my ecumaniac tendencies to talk about the bad days just now.

2010-10-04T00:21:00.002+01:00

So now I'm somewhere-in-the-west-country for 2 weeks, followed by somewhere-in-the-midlands for 2 weeks, followed by back-to-the-west-country for a week. Placement is homeless medicine.

I'm really excited about my placement - it sounds really interesting, and my supervisor sounds enthusiastic about teaching, so it should be good.

But.

It means being away from home, and my lovely one for ages. And, much as I love my grandparents, with whom I'm staying in the west, and much as I'm very appreciative that they're having me to stay - their wee cottage is quite claustrophobic. I think being out all day on placement, and having work to do in the evenings will help, but tonight I'm feeling quite crowded. I won't have a key (because they're never out), and I'll have to let them know when I'm to be back etc, so it's a slight curtailment of my independence.

Still, I think in the midlands I'll be in the opposite situation - because I don't really know the people I'm staying with. But, then again, they'll be limits on my coming and going still.

It's not that I ever really come back after 10 (especially here, where I don't know anybody) or that I'll have the random urge for a 24 hour shop at 3am (I think I'd have to walk to nearest city) - just not having the option makes me panicked somehow. I'm such a city girl, really. And I relish my independence, even if I don't use it for anything particularly exciting.

Everyone's in bed, so I have to be, but I'm a bit homesick, and a bit nervous about starting placement, and I'd quite like to sit up for a while.

At least I have the internet. Even if I did have to bring it with me...

2010-09-09T14:23:00.002+01:00

Wohoo! I'm a medic again. It's fun! Lots of busy, but it's really great to be back. My consultant for this block is really good, which is a plus - not one of these doctors who would really rather never see a medical student. I feel a lot more confident on the wards than I have before, which makes the days much more interesting than hanging round in a corner waiting for someone to give you something to do.

I've had the timely reminder that patient's stories do not fall nicely into the subtitles you use to write up your case. This frustrated me until I just added a new subtitle.

I've also been reminded of the old cliche which goes along the lines of : If you leave a patient interview thinking that you've gone mad, the patient has schizophrenia. It sounds flippant until you experience it for yourself, but when someone is having these very bizarre delusional thoughts or hallucinations, and they have no insight into it (as you would expect with 'typical' schizophrenia), they make their experiences sound so rational, and so real, that you start to question your own reality which doesn't have space for them to have happened. It's quite a disconcerting experience.

Third and finally I've been reminded how much I sometimes just want to give a patient a big hug, when everything is going belly up and they look sad/scared/vulnerable.

2010-08-30T23:41:00.001+01:00

Super nervous about tomorrow. Have to report to quite a rough place quite far away on my own. Also starting with a psych placement. I find psych incredibly boring. At this point I can only be pleasantly surprised.

2010-08-29T02:02:00.003+01:00

I don't remember how to do a respiratory exam. Luckily however I am starting with psych, and I have a 5-week self selected module advantage on the rest of my class. I'm nearly as nervous as I was before my first day of medical school! Still, I am fairly certain it will prove to be a massive anti-climax, so I keep veering into total apathy. Hoping to locate healthy medium before Monday morning.

Catharsis.

2010-08-25T21:56:00.003+01:00

I wonder if I will ever, really get over this. Been having a bad couple of weeks, and it has me making disaster contingency plans. Paranoia or common sense? The problem is that noone can answer that. It would be much easier if someone could say to me 'you will be ill again, but not until March 2014, expect a rough winter 2017...'. I hate not knowing, and second guessing.

I don't know if it's foolish that I've organised to spend 5 weeks away from home on placement. It could/should/will be fine. But it will be worrying for me, and for everyone else (not literally everyone else) until it's over and I'm back. It will be the first thing that I've really done since I started uni that has gone against the 'don't do that, you might get ill and then you'd been screwed' voice in the back of my head. I have turned down so many opportunities or potential opportunities because of it - this isn't self pity, I actually think in every case it has turned out well for me, in terms of getting a better placement or experience here than I would have done somewhere else.

I'm excited about the placement though. It's in homeless medicine, which is an area I've been really interested in for a while now. It took a lot to get it sorted out, and it's going to be quite stressful in terms of travel, but I think/hope/know it'll be worth it.

I think quite a lot of this nonsense is just being worried about getting back to uni anyway. Mostly it's the bog standard 'I've just had a year out and I honestly cannot remember what causes finger clubbing', combined with a healthy dose of making new friends/what if they all hate me rubbish.

You will be relieved to know, perhaps that life isn't all doom and gloom. There are two carrot cakes in the oven. And we have a veg box. And Emma and Fran are coming home tomorrow. And I have a great flatmate *ahem* who will be home from choir soon. So don't worry. But feel free to send chocolate.

More foody goodness...

2010-08-20T22:36:00.003+01:00

...I'll have to start posting pictures if this keeps turning into a food blog.

Tonight I cooked a tomato and basil risotto (just a risotto bianco with a handful of pomodorino tomatoes and chopped basil stirred throw when t'was taken off the heat), and a carrot cake (this recipe, just with egg replacer - and green food colouring in the icing for funsies). Just what you need on a Friday night, especially when it's Coralie's last night in Glasgow for the forseeable future. The margaritas that Holly made helped the cooking along no end.

In other food news, I am really struggling to keep coriander plants alive. Has anyone else had this problem? My basil is thriving...

Third and final item : two weeks today I get to do my favourite thing - cook for 20ish people - for Holly's birthday. I'm trying to decide what to cook! Probably a couple of hot things - maybe a soup and a curry, and then some hearty salads, and plenty of cake. Most that can be done in advance so I don't turn into manic-stuck-to-the-kitchen-hostess women. It doesn't suit me.

It always makes me a bit anxious to cook vegan food for non-vegans. I worry that people are polite to my face and then say '...but it would've been great with some cheese' as soon as I turn my back. Can we say paranoid?

2010-08-19T02:22:00.002+01:00

I just had one of those conversations, about things that aren't anymore. Now it's all swirling round in my head - memories and feelings and fears - and it's like no time has passed at all. I don't feel especially grounded at the minute - new flat, contemplating joining a new year group at uni, lots of people still being away for summer etc - so I'm all up in my head. Hohum. This is quite a lonely time to be awake sometimes.

It's so strange just how similar two different people's experience of the same situation can be. The common, almost secret, language that you can share, which someone 'outside' will never speak quite as fluently. It's painful to know that other people are still wading through the shit that you've managed to leave behind. It makes me feel guilty somehow that I can't say 'me too' anymore.

Enough. To bed.

'cello

2010-08-03T22:31:00.002+01:00

I love my cello (his name's Boris if you were wondering...) - I haven't played him enough recently (which is, if I'm honest, absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the lovely Dish has had him for a couple of months while her beautiful cello was at the cello doctor.

I've been playing a lot more piano than cello the past couple of years (and I don't even have a piano in the house...yet!) but this week I'm going to a course at home, for cellists of all ages and abilities run by my cello teacher. It was 4 years since I saw her when I arrived at the church today, but within half an hour it was like no time had passed at all! Annie's running the course together with the wonderful Holger, who accompanied me for my grade 8 and A-level recital. It's really fun!

We're playing lots of different types of music, for ensembles for 4 to 12 people. If that wasn't fun enough (and trust me, when you're a cellist, sometimes it's really nice to be out of the shadow of the violins) for a bit of a change in the middle of the day, some of the younger ones and I made cupcakes - and tomorrow we get to decorate them! It was great to hang out with the kids, because I've missed the brats from orchestra over the past few weeks.

So currently in the oven just now are some vegan cupcakes to add to the pile (as everyone seemed most concerned that I wouldn't be able to have one when they're done!) This is merely a practice run for making more for Friday when the parents come to hear our concert =]

Lovely, lovely, lovely. Cellos and cake - what better a combination?

New recipes (to us anyway)

2010-07-27T21:09:00.004+01:00

(aka 'What do vegans eat?')

This week, at Holly and George's House of Vegan, we have tried several new recipes, and all have been made of win.

No pictures. Use your imagination. Those little critters need exercised you know.

PPK Spicy Peanut, Eggplant and Shallot Stew
(aka really yummy veg satay)
We chucked in some cooked potatoes that needed eating, and that was gooood. Really any veg would do. We had a big tub of Suma peanut butter from Holland and Barrett, otherwise it would have needed most of a jar, which seems silly. Nommed with rice. 6 portions (4 in freezer for future nomification).

Sohpie Dahl's Lentil Shepherds Pie with Champ
With obvious and easy vegan substitutions. Seriously meaty tasting (but not in an 'ick dead carcass' kind of a way). Chucked in some mushrooms that were lying around. Left out the celery, because it's gross. Also left out the peas, because we forgot. Says it serves 2. You might be fooled when you see how much there is, but she doesn't lie : it's so good that you can't stop. Could serve 3/4 self-disciplined people.

Also, if you need a good red lentil daal recipe, get hold of the Veganomicon. The red lentil / cauliflower stew is win.

My new favourite (and simple as) roast dinner
On Saturday night we had Sunday lunch. Figure that out. Preheat the oven to 185 oC. Boil some tatties for 5 minutes. Heat up some olive oil in a roasting pan. Make up a wee box of stuffing. Drain the tatties, and shake them around til they go all fluffy. Stick them in the roasting pan, and coat them in the oil. Stuff 2 big flat mushrooms with the stuffing (make any extra into balls) and put it in another roasting tin. Cook everything for half an hour. Make some gravy, cook some veg, and nom.

And for dessert...

Vegan cupcakes takes over the world - chocolate cupcakes
Add 1 cup bashed up oreos / bourbon creams to the cake batter before cooking, and 1/2 cup to the buttercream icing for extra win. You're welcome.

2010-07-24T23:43:00.004+01:00

I've had a lovely couple of days. I've always been kinda rubbish at at-home-holiday-time in Glasgow, even though I spend the majority of my holidays here these days. Still, I'm learning, as will become evident.

Yesterday Holly and I were thinking of going to see a film, so I had a wee peek at the Glasgow Film Theatre listings, and it seemed that a certain Mr Billy Bragg was making a personal appearance. There was a showing of the film Breaking Rocks a documentary about Jail Guitar Doors, a group who donate guitars etc to prisons to be used to help in the rehabilitation of inmates. It's a good film and a good project - worth checking out - especially to those of you musicians who've ever realised how lucky we are to have music as an outlet. There was a wee performance by a couple of the guys who've been through the project, who were awesome, and the evening was rounded off with Billy Bragg singing Redemption Song and I Keep Faith. Not too shabby.

Today, we went into town to check out the Merchant City Festival (with a detour to stock up on vegan goodness at Holland and Barrett) - saw some street performers, and bought some tasty looking antipasti from the Italian market. Then this evening we watched the Yes Minister boxset, and made a roast dinner (stuffing stuffed big flat mushrooms in case you were wondering). Bliss.

It's been a wonderful couple of days =]

p.s. As if to prove the point, as I finish typing, I'm brought a piece of homemade bread (Holly) with homemade strawberry jam (my Mum, and Lizzie).

More books

2010-07-22T13:19:00.002+01:00

Bedridden. Feeling poorly and disgusterous.

So, more about books.

Coralie, I want you to do the book meme too.

While I've been moving, I've come across a lot of well-intentioned books. That isn't to say the books themselves are particularly martyr-esque, more that they were acquired as I-suppose-I-should-read-this-then-s rather than oh-goody-a-book-s.

And I genuinely do think I should read them - some because I want the facts etc they contain, some because I think I'll enjoy them once I get going, some because I think they'll help me to understand people who don't think the same as me.

So oui...

I found a bunch of these books, and most of them I just plan to throw into the nearest charity shop as soon as I'm done (first making sure there aren't any old ladies in the firing line...). I've started pairing up these 'well-intentioned' books, with books I actually want to read.

Thus - I read 'God's Big Picture : Tracing the Storyline of the Bible' (popular book in a former church of mine) and I get to read 'Things Hidden : Scripture as Spirituality' (written by my favourite Alberquerquian monk). Or - I read 'Matters of Life and Death' (medical ethics according to CMF) and I get to read 'Essays on Women, Medicine and Health'.

I'm really excited to read 'The Tears the Made the Clyde' by Carol Craig, which I bought this week. I'm happy because it promises to answer the questions that my research project this year raised for me. Isn't it great when people write books just for you?!

What are you all reading these days anyway?

Books =]

2010-07-20T16:44:00.006+01:00

I updated my books page today. Apart from that I have mostly been cleaning, colour-coding and making things perpendicular to other things.

Hmm. I rarely post memes, but here is one :

Choose 25 books you've read that made an impact on you in whatever way. Don't over-think it, just whatever comes to mind, in no particular order.

Then tag some friends, if you want. I'd like to hear these people's answers (but don't feel pressured!) : Annie, Catriona, David, Emma, Emma, Fran, Gill (of the maternal variety), Holly, Jane, and whoever else can be bothered. If you do it, then link in the comments so I know =]

1 Lord of the Rings - Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R.Tolkien
(my favourite of the trilogy. Yes, I am one of those people who's read them every year since I was 9. No, I don't speak Elvish.)
2 Back Home - Michelle Magorian
(or indeed Goodnight Mr Tom, A Spoonful of Jam or A Cuckoo in the Nest - all books that really caught my imagination as a child)
3 Five on Finniston Farm - Enid Blyton
(my favourite of the bunch. Yes, that is seriously why I'm called George)
4 The Chalet Girls in Camp - Eleanor Brent-Dyer
(the Chalet School was my complete obsession as a child - never did complete my collection)
5 Systematic Theology - Wayne Grudem
(the end of my dabblings in Conservative Evangelicalism)
6 Everything Belongs - Richard Rohr
(a beautiful book on contemplate prayer, which I read when I was going through some hard stuff)
7 Wasted - Marya Hornbacher
(an autobiography of an eating disorder that is somewhat of a rallying cry to women to learn to love their bodies and appetites)
8 A Pocket Full of Rye - Agatha Christie
(as a child I had the complete Miss Marple in three volumes, and they were well-loved. I have been left with an enduring fondness for Agatha Christie audiobooks)
9 H2G2 - Douglas Adams
(more the original radio series, but I love the books too)
10 The book of Psalms
(a prayer for every occassion)
11 Through the Narrow Gate / The Spiral Staircase - Karen Armstrong
(two volumes of autobiography that really helped me to approach her other writing)
12 Postman Pat books
(I used to force my uncle to read them to me when he came home from work)
13 Dead Famous - Ben Elton
(one of my first journeys into books what my parents / teachers hadn't pre-approved)
14 My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult
(another one of the books that got me through the reading teenager > 'adult' transition)
15 Cabbages for the King - Adrian Plass
(really hard to choose a favourite Adrian Plass, but I love this collection of prayers / reflections)
16 Spirituality in Mental Health Care - John Swinton
(helped me start to draw the different strands of my life together in terms of medicine / faith - having spent a lot of time trying to find that convergence in other places, see #5)
17 Suicide : A Study in Sociology - Emile Durkheim
(basis of my research project this year, for my sins)
18 The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
(I've read so many amazing novels this year, this is one, and I demolished the 800 pages in less than 24h)
19 Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
(another of the books I read this year, the voice and the theology are pitch perfect)
20 Clinical Medicine - Kumar and Clark
(to date the most useful, and also most impressive looking - read : big - of my medical books)
21 The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dicken
(one of my favourites as a child, along with Martin Chuzzlewit, Bleak House, David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickelby. Once told babysitter that Jane Austen was 'too vapid' for my tastes)
22 Letters to a Young Catholic - George Weigel
(I really loved this gentle meander through modern Catholic history. It brought out the catholicism of the Catholic church)
23 The World Without Us - Alan Weisman
(one of a collection of really well written pop-non-fiction that I've really enjoyed recently. Also Bad Science, Trust Me I'm a Junior Doctor, Freakonomics, Affluenza etc)
24 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
(and the whole series. I loved Jo, and the Pilgrim's Progress thread through it. The film is one of 2 films that makes me cry every time. The second is Apollo 13.)
25 The Magician's Nephew - C.S.Lewis
(my favourite of the Chronicles of Narnia)

Addendum
Mallory Towers / St.Clare's - more Enid Blyton
Heidi - Johanna Spyri
Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfield

And so it begins...

2010-07-07T23:41:00.002+01:00

My wrist feels so naked! 11 months and 1 week since I finished my last stint in A/E, I just cut off the friendship bracelets that I've worn on my wrist all year, ready for starting placement tomorrow. It's not proper 4th year yet, but a wee placement I've organised to get my hand back in. Also has the potential for some interesting research assistant work I hope.

I find out what order my blocks for the next two years will be laid out in on Friday. Between now and finals I have : 3 blocks Medicine, 3 x Surgery, 1 x GP, 1 x Psychiatry, 1 x Paediatrics, 1 x Obs/Gyn, plus 2 x Self-Selected. All fun and games.

I tried to think through a general history template yesterday and missed out 4 key sections. Fail. Hopefully it'll come back to me pretty soon.

I'm started the year less one eyebrow piercing and plus one tattoo. Plus one degree (perhaps of greater relevance).

I have pretty much no idea what to expect of tomorrow (have never met my supervisor before, or been to the hospital he works in), so I'm a bit nervous...

Still - I can't wait to be a medic again!

E2010 pt 6 / SCM summer celebration

2010-06-05T18:39:00.004+01:00

Oof, what a couple of days I've had. Not over yet, either.

Yesterday morning started with a great opening worship - a local Catholic primary school took part, and got everyone (stewards, bishops, interpreters, everyone) joining in the action songs. It was quite a sight to see!

Then I left the delegates in the wonderfully capable hands of my steward team, while I updated the database of departure arrangements. (My life is on giant adrenaline rush, y'know...)

After lunch myself and the lovely Holly hopped on a train down to York for the SCM summer celebrations. I stood for the board of trustees again, so last night involved a hustings, before a quick trip to the pub and a joyful night prayer. I wanted to teach everyone some of the songs we've been singing up here, and it was great! Everyone was in good voice and good spirit. We had a few minutes of silence to pray for the situation in Cumbria, and in Israel/Palestine this week. We sang a beautifully haunting song (I believe it's from Bolivia, arranged by the Iona folk):

All God's children, let us walk, and let's walk together.
Brother, sister, children and youth, let's all move together.

This morning I was re-elected to the trustees (General Council), but under a different portfolio - Events. Sad to say goodbye to old faces, and exciting to welcome new ones.

Then myself and Hilary (the national coordinator of SCM) jumped on a train back up to Edinburgh.

We had a meeting of SCM / WSCF members / friends at the conference, hosted by the Edinburgh friends group. It was a really moving meeting for me, and I'm not quite sure why. It's always impressive, in some way, to understand the depth of the history, and international connections of the movement.

One of the WSCF delegates said to us, We need to remember that we are a Movement, not a Structure, people come and go, and we must just try to challenge each other on the way.

Then it rained, and my feet got wet. And I had dinner (roast potatoes!) with a delegate from the Cook Islands.

In an hour we will have the closing plenary of the conference, and I imagine we'll start to try and sort out the office to move things back to 121 tomorrow.

Tomorrow afternoon I get to go to a service where John Sentamu is the preacher and John Bell is leading worship. Life can be pretty awesome.

As long as Scotrail sort out my sleeper booking for tomorrow night, I'll remain a very happy (if tired) George.

e2010 pt something, section b : v.weird to return to my room to find that the person who came to make my bed symmetrically arranged my toiletries

2010-06-03T23:26:00.000+01:00

e2010 pt something (long title bc i can't make the posting thing work...) all delegates who wanted made it to and from parliament with ease and poise.

2010-06-03T23:20:00.000+01:00

E2010 pt 4

2010-06-03T15:28:00.004+01:00

It is much quieter here in the conference office, when all of the delegates are in their sessions. However, after worrying that the ash cloud was going to strand a bunch of church people endeavouring to get here, the BA strikes have instead left us with a few people who have no way to get home... Still, 121 staff are doing stirling work to re-flight everybody, so I'm sure all will be well.

Tonight is our attempt to transport everyone half a mile by coach. It sounds simple enough, but I'll only rest easy when we're all back for dinner!

There are some really interesting conversations going on between sessions. Delegates seem to be actually considering the suggested 'discussion points' which is rare!

Right, I'd better go and rally the troops for coffee time. These interesting conversations keep making people late for things! (I just like people to be on time... Does that make me a bad / bossy person?)

E2010 pt 3

2010-06-03T10:26:00.001+01:00

It's very sunny so everyone is very happy. That is all. =]

E2010 pt 2

2010-06-02T21:24:00.002+01:00

The welcome service is underway. John Bell's led us in a great variety of songs from all over the shop. Gender balance in invited welcomer-s is...absent. However, this is more representative of lack of gender balance within the hierarchy of Scottish denominations rather than anything else.

Tomorrow I'm going to work out gender, denominational and age balance once everyone's registered. It should be interesting. It's always hard to judge from a room. Certainly much lower youth participation than I expected bearing in mind two of the bodies represented on the General Council are youth organisations. Still. Hmm. Not entirely surprising. Never is.

In good news, my friend Anastasia who I met when I went to Volos with an EYCE inter-religious dialogue meeting a couple of years ago is here...with her little boy who is an absolute cherub - 20 months old! Adorable!

The second worst day of stewarding (registration day) is over. The worst day is to come. After tomorrow everyone will know where they have to be when, so our work will be pretty much done. Also tomorrow we have to get everyone to the Scottish Parliament and back, without leaving anyone behind in either place. Such is the work of a steward. Maybe this time I'll learn my lesson...

E2010

2010-06-02T17:23:00.002+01:00

Registration's nearly complete here at Edinburgh 2010. Lots of happy faces, and a little bit of the-internet-won't-work stress. I've met two friends I didn't realise were coming, which is rather lovely. I would quite like a little sit down and a cup of tea though. Nearly dinner time =]

We were met, incidentally, by protestors from the Zionist Baptists, or somesuch, who seemed to be protesting ecumenism and/or Catholics. These are the same charming folk who protested the 'Jesus Christ Queen of Heaven' thing, and the Marilyn Manson gig at Carling Academy. It was most bizarre. Oh well, just yet another way in which I'm destined for hellfire and brimstone I suppose...

It's very sunny. The delegates have been presented with logo-d umbrellas though (just in case!)

You know you're a medic when...

2010-05-24T17:09:00.002+01:00

It takes you an hour to sift through your paper recycling to check for any patient identifiables. Boo.

2010-05-23T20:08:00.003+01:00

Tonight I begin the slow and nostalgic process of packing up to leave this flat. (As I've already said, my lease is up by the end of June but I'm away for most of June so it has to be done in the next week.)

This evening's task is to start sorting out the kitchen stuff that I won't need before I leave - I'm starting here so that I know what food needs used up. (Typical vegan incidentally, I need to use up : red lentils, yellow split peas, 3 tins of mixed pulses, wholegrain rice, quinoa, pearl barley and arborio rice)

Still, I'm one of the lucky people who gets to move straight in somewhere, so if I don't use it all up now it's not the end of the world.

This week is going to be really weird. I won't lie, I'm at the end of my tether living in this flat (building, not people), and I'd quite like to move before my flatmates and I are fed up of each other.

The end of an era, but I'm looking forward to what comes next.

I have way too much stuff.

2010-05-20T23:43:00.003+01:00

(Providing I don't get viva-d) I'm done!

I've been reading a lot. In April and May I've read : Spiral Staircase, Poisonwood Bible, both Secret Diaries of Adrian Plass, Back Home, A Walk in the Woods, Adrian Mole: the Prostrate Years, The Shadow of the Wind, Gulliver's Travels and now Gilead. I'm finding it a lot easier to get lost in a story recently. It's been ages since I've really enjoyed reading a novel, so I'm very happy. Time to reclaim the nickname 'nose in a book' methinks. I think next in store are The Island, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Name of the Rose and House Rules.

Yay books!

2010-05-08T21:24:00.008+01:00

I am so confused by British politics today. I am heartily suspicious of anyone who seems certain, because no answer that anyone has suggested yet has seemed adequate. I will admit that I voted Lib Dem, because I wanted half a hope of my vote counting for something. I don't regret it, but my heart is with the Greens, and I wish I could have let myself vote for them.

Our country desparately needs electoral reform. Our system was designed before universal education, the welfare state, the NHS. Our system was designed before any of use were born.

I was at a protest in George Sqaure today, for electoral reform. At least 200 of my friends on facebook have made some call for a change to the system in the last week, but there were only about 50 people there. I don't know. I don't. I don't know if PR is the way forward, really. I have some kind of visceral reaction to the idea of BNP representation - but that is what democracy is. And if we can't get democracy right, we have no hope in hell of making anything more liberal work.

I don't know, and it scares me. I don't know, and it makes me want to hide from it. But this is my country. I will be working for the NHS for the next 60 years most likely.

I don't know what's for the best, and neither does anyone else, really. Anyone who claims to is lying, simplfying, deluding themselves. I don't know, but having leadership that more truly represents this country in its beautiful, wonderful, dangerous, glorious, exciting diversity seems a good place to start. No?

2010-05-07T20:56:00.001+01:00

Must remember not to pick political fights with entire portions of the extended family on facebook while horribly sleep deprived due to morbidly compulsive nature of all-night election coverage. Over and out.

2010-04-29T20:55:00.003+01:00

Right gang (Jane especially...) - what should we do in Berlin? We're staying here, EastSeven hostel in Prenzlauer Berg.

I'm procrastinating from stats revision by starting a final clean up / clearout of my room, before I start packing to move. My contract's not up until the end of June, but as I'll be away for as near of the whole month as makes no difference, it's only a month until I need to be packed up. I don't really know where to start - I've accumulated so much stuff over the 3 years in this room. Too much stuff.

I don't really know where to start though... Not all that easy to second guess what I'll need over the next few weeks, especially as I've quite a bit of free time. Still, as long as everything's clerly labelled I don't suppose it matters if it needs unpacked again.

Sorry, thinking out loud. I've been reading lots recently, which is lovely. Finally got reading to reading The Poisonwood Bible and it was awesome. Mega intense though. Read all 600 words in 24 hours. I literally couldn't put it down, and not in a pleasant way! I just had to know what was going to happen.

Maybe that's enough rambling for now!

Edit : p.s. the first exam went alright I think, thanks for good wishes etc =]

2010-04-25T11:25:00.003+01:00

I am looking forward to my lunch (sausages and mushrooms in fresh baguette). I am looking forward to Holy City this evening. I am looking forward to the exam being over tomorrow. I am looking forward to seeing the brats tomorrow night.

Most of all I am looking forward to going to Berlin for 10 days, eating some good vegan food, checking out some political history and spending some time (hopefully in the sunshine) with the lovely Holly. Booked the hostel yesterday =] Yay!

2010-04-23T18:29:00.004+01:00

Excuse this, one and all, I need to vent.

I'm have a *major* case of nerves today. On Monday I'm sitting my first essay-based exam since my A-Levels. And that's 4 years now (something that would be worthy of a freakout all on its own if I had more time to think about it...). I majorly fluffed-up the mock paper timewise and that's making me anxious. It will be fine, but I'm not enjoying it in anticipation.

Lots of other bits and pieces to go, but none that worry me as much.

And then the summer =] Bossing around the stewards at E2010, hopefully getting down to SCM summer gathering, then coach-ing it to Berlin for 10 days. This before (hopefully) graduating and moving all of my stuff 1 mile down the road.

Bien. On with the revision.

2010-04-18T17:57:00.002+01:00

I know I won't be the only one who's not unhappy about the grounding of thousands of flights.

Two asides - 1) I am not (obviously) happy that 800 people in Iceland had to leave their homes. That's horrible and must be really scary. 2) I am not happy that people are stranded all over the shop trying to get home.

It is 2 years since I have flown anywhere. It's not that I haven't been abroad - I've been in France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Romania, Hungary, CR... - but I've been by train or coach. There are 3 major inconveniences - 1) Time. Obviously the further you're going, the longer it takes. But, especially for readers down south, 12 hours will get you significantly inland on the continent. 2) Money. Trains cost more than cheap planes. I know. It sucks. So I travel less than I would. To me that makes it more enjoyable when I do get away. 3) Need to plan in advance. If you want cheap options, you need to be thinking ahead. Something everything has forgotten how to do since the mobile phone was invented.

I'm not ruling out ever flying again. But not within the UK, and not anytime soon. There's no need.

2010-04-17T22:45:00.002+01:00

One of the reasons I've enjoyed this year is that I feel somehow less disparate. The stuff that I'm interested in and the stuff that I'm studying are feeding and shaping each other. The question that plagues dark sleepless nights and the question that I have to tackle in the cold light of day is one and the same : A complete social transformation is what is needed, and yet seems impossible. Do we concentrate our energies pursuing this goal, or do we make the best of the system that we've got? There is no right answer.

I will not finish this year with answers. Not meaningful ones anyway. But, as it should be, my questions are more complex, and better understood. I will be a better doctor because of this year in a way that I cannot quite quantify.

I am more secure, I suppose, in some things that I thought anyway. Because there is some clarity, and some confidence to be gained from knowing that someone else thinks the same thing too. Or at least that there are so many perspectives that another must be equally valid.

My brain has been stretched and pumelled this year more than it has ever been in med school. My project (now finished, save printing) has involved spending hours doing nothing but thinking. Two hours of thinking time that ends up as half of a sentence in the final paper. Thinking at that interface where concepts meet and touch on history.

I would like to leave this year with a more integrated idea of what it means to be healthy. It sounds simple, but it's anything but. I'll happily bend your ear with the start of it if you're foolish enough to ask me.

I will end the year as I started, with the question : What is health? What are the determinants of health? And, in the immortal words of the Amateur Transplants "What the fuck is Public Health?"

2010-04-17T00:37:00.002+01:00

How can you teach someone the point of being alive? How can you teach them to feel the heat of the sun and taste food and revel in questions like you do? To hear music and feel love almost tangibly? How do you make them feel loved and purposeful, and alive?

2010-04-16T14:32:00.001+01:00

I've finally sorted out my blog format. If you're a Google Reader reader, come and have a look =]

2010-04-16T00:22:00.002+01:00

There are many things about myself that I do not like. I'm not alone in this regard. There are definitely some moments in my life that are first in line if 'ctrl + z' ever starts working in the real world. But I'm not that bad, really. Maybe? I quite like myself today.

2010-04-14T22:42:00.002+01:00

I am so bursting with thoughts and theories and excitement and fear and joy and sadness and anger. Questions lead to questions and laughing leads to tears. So I will sit here in my room with my revision and my vegan smarties. I will read and eat and sleep and dance and let the rest of the world carry on in its craziness around me. I will get my election coverage from the Vote Now Show and my theology from Adrian Plass and it will all be alright in the end.

2010-04-08T12:12:00.000+01:00

I'm at my mum's house for a few days. Sitting at the kitchen table working on my project while the bustle of a busy house carries on around me. Rather lovely.

Sorry, it's tradition y'know...

2010-03-29T01:25:00.001+01:00

While not strictly a coursework, it's as near as makes no odds. The Review Essay (3,500 words on minimum alcohol pricing in 10 days) is hot out of the printer and submitted through the scary plagiarism software. I'm very sleepy now. Can I go to bed please?

Justice for Rima

2010-02-23T11:15:00.003Z

A professor at Glasgow uni has a 17 year-old foster daughter called Rima.

Rima is an unaccompanied minor from Eritrea who suffered seriously from abuse and neglect in Italy while fleeing persecution.

Following a ruling from the Court of Appeal, finding Italy to be a 'safe country' she is facing deportation.

We now urgently need help again to try and stop Rima being deported to Italy.

There is need for a substantial letter campaign for clemency and for her right to remain in the UK.

"We believe:

That Rima has suffered enought trauma, and that to repeat it now is barbaric.

That there is very good evidence that Rima is under 18, and that the burden of proof on her is unreasonable in the circumstances

That Rima, Robert & Alison have formed close family and emotional bonds which should be respected

We ask that Rima be released from fear and give the right to live with Robert & Alison for as long as conditions in Eritrea require it."

Please write to :

Rt Hon Alan Johnson MP
Home Secretary
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

Alex Salmond
Office of the First Minister
St. Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG
email: FirstMinister@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

Director: UK Border Agency Scotland

Festival Court,

200 Brand Street,

Govan,

Glasgow G51 1DH

There is also a Facebook group (quick and easy way to spread awareness to your friends).

An Evening with the Brats

2010-02-22T22:20:00.002Z

Today's orchestra was particularly funny :

1) (to me) "from the waist down you look like a pixie - in a good way"

2) (to noone in general) "People don't eat orphans. Well they do sometimes, but you're not supposed to."

3) I went to the shop and I bought an Apple, a Bumblebee, a Cat, a Deckchair, an Elephant, some French dressing, a Garden gnome, a Hannah Montana wig, an Inuit, the Jonas Brothers, a Kitkat, some Lemon meringue pie, Molly, some Noodles and Origami, a Peacock, Queen Elizabeth the first, a Ratchet screwdriver... [at this point it was time to go home]

2010-02-17T18:46:00.002Z

So...Lent again!

This year I am only drinking water, this in an attempt to beat my addiction to caffeine, and more specifically a certain aspartame-laden fizzy drink that I am rarely to be seen without. My head is pounding. Eugh.

Still, it's part of this whole wasting-too-much thing that we all seem to do. Hmm. More to follow undoubtedly.

an assortment of gathered thoughts...

2010-01-23T13:57:00.006Z

Cross-posted to www.movement.org.uk/blog

A professor from the public health department came to speak to us at SCM on the 12th. We were talking about George Monbiot's article in the Guardian about Avatar as a metaphor for the 'American Holocaust'. We talked about what it meant to exploit, what it meant to build on the burning ashes of a civilisation we have destroyed. We talked about a new way of thinking, a new way of acting, a new way of being - connected, sustainable, interdependent.

He brought the session to a close by reminding us that as Christians we must remain faithful. We must faithfully carry out that portion of the task appointed to us, and we can do no more, no less than that.

I went to bed thinking about persistence, steadfastness, faithfulness. I have fought the good fight, I have run the race to the end. I have kept the faith.

I woke up to the news about Haiti, and the blogosphere was alive with those who wanted to go - just to go, to be there, to do something. Anything. That natural instinct - to reach out our arms to the hurting and pull them to us. To touch, to hold, to comfort. To sit shiva, to weep with the mourning and to question the motives of an omnipotent God who leaves children to fade away under the wreckage of buildings.

Some are called to go - they have the time, the skills, the opportunity - to go and be the ambassadors for a world united once again in shock and sorrow.

As for the rest of us, ours is to keep praying, keep giving and keep asking questions about the poverty that has made a bad situation far, far worse. To persist, faithfully, with what is ours to do.

2010-01-05T13:42:00.001Z

I admit that 13.43 on a Tuesday afternoon is an odd time to release, announce, launch or in any way reveal something, but the plan can be found here >> http://theplanblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/so-whats-plan.html

2009-12-29T23:42:00.004Z

I'm going to bed, to try and get 5 hours sleep before heading down to Liverpool tomorrow for Andy's funeral. I'm sure I shall hear him eulogised more eloquently than I could ever hope to here, so just a picture :Eternal rest grant unto him oh Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace.

The Plan - An Introduction

2009-12-29T18:35:00.000Z

I’m fairly certain I’ll live in community at some point. I always have been, although my understanding of what community might entail has changed quite a lot since the early days in convent school.

One of the things that most appeals to me about life in community is the idea of having someone to be accountable to.

The more I mention this to people, the more I find that I’m not alone – that others who no longer feel like they have to ‘answer’ to their parents in day-to-day life, who haven’t yet started families of their own, feel an enormous pressure to keep themselves to really high self-imposed standards, without much meaningful support or encouragement.

It’s hard to tease out priorities for time, and money. Uni work is important, but how important? I could find enough to study 24 hours a day, and everyone would agree that that wouldn’t be a wise use of time. For one thing, my laundry doesn’t do itself, there’s only so long I can leave the washing up before I’m eating out a saucepan with a ladle, and it doesn’t do any harm to run a duster round the flat once in a while. There’s extra-curricular stuff to be done – to be ‘well-rounded’ (as well as to appear so on my CV) – music, sport, whatever’s your cup of tea. Then how much down time do I need to be healthy and happy? I need to sleep at some point, granted. But when do I become the proverbial sluggard? And when, in all of this, do I have time to call my mum (something I’m notoriously bad at) or hang out with my friends?

That balancing act is enough to be getting on with, generally. Yet nagging away at the back of my mind is that I should be doing more. I should be reading my Bible, shopping ethically, reading good books, praying. And what about the rest? The other stuff I should be doing, but I don’t have time, or more, I don’t know where to start. Where are my priorities there? Climate change, preventable disease, child labour, gender inequalities? The poor child in Glasgow or the poor child in Ghana? I find myself in some sort of overwhelmed paralysis. There is so much that I could be doing, each as worthy as the next, and I can’t decide.

So, I decided, I need to find a way of building this stuff into my routine. I need to do what I can, in the knowledge that I can’t do everything. And I need to have someone to be accountable to in this, just as I do with my uni work. Because it’s important, but in a busy week, it’s the stuff that doesn’t need handed in that doesn’t get done.

If you’ve followed me thus far, well done. So, this is where I found myself – priorities, accountability.

On Christmas Eve, the thing going round and round in my head was ‘if Jesus really was coming tomorrow, what would I wish I’d done’. Not in a crazy apocalyptic way. More in a ‘could I really look him in the eye and claim to be his follower living the way I do now’ way.

I decided that 2010 is as good a time as any, and an idea of how to go about it took shape.

I’d like to spend a month at a time thinking about some different issues, deciding how to respond to them, and putting that into practice. In an ideal world, I would have a collection of resources and ideas handed to me on a platter, and someone to check up on me.

I know I’m not the only one.

This is how the plan was born. Watch this space.

Sausage Casserole (serve 1 hungry person)

2009-12-14T20:31:00.003Z

I have been very remiss about blogging recipes for my dear father, and Herbeey the herbivore as I promised to. So here we go. Tonight I made sausage casserole. It tastes good.

In a casserole dish (or heavy-based saucepan) :

Roughly chop and fry 2-3 shallots (or 1 small onion) and 2-3 vegan sausages.

Rouhly chop 3-4 new potatoes (or 1 medium potato), 1 carrot, 3-4 medium-sized mushrooms and add then to the pan.

Pour water over the stuff in the pan until everything is just covered. Add a vegetable stock cube and 1 heaped tsp flour (optional, but makes the sauce nice and thick).

Give a couple of minutes on high heat to get things going then leave covered on a low heat for 1/2 hour.

NB : check more frequently if in a saucepan in case 1 things stick to the bottom -add half a glass of water and move to a different ring, set on a low heat 2 it boils over - take the lid off.

If a sharp knife slips into the potato / carrot easily then it's ready. If the sauce isn't thick enough for your liking, leave it uncovered for 5 minutes and that should sort it out.

Turn off the heat and add a handful of frozen peas - sneaky trick - stops you having to wait for it to cool down / burning your mouth (seriously, it smells that good).

Enjoy ! (Nomnomnom...)

2009 =]

2009-12-13T15:44:00.019Z

I have an exciting new project that I will share in t'New Year.

But for now, 2009 in summary (one extra word / month) plus a selection of my favourite photos - in roughly chronological and/or vaguely thematic order :
January : Duke.February : Lizzie visited.March : Wasn't very well.April : Started top secret relationship.May : Last ever PBL. Passed exams.June : Psychiatry module, pretty interesting. ThePROJECT.July : Acute med elective - excited about medicine again.August : Last workcamp, Budapest, Prague. Greenbelt - heaven (taste of).September : Home to Londinium, back to uni, SCM visioning weekend.October : Properly started Public Health degree. My first Holy City - met Carys.November : Glasgow SCM, Sheffield visit, 3 countries in one day - Wrexham gathering.December : Tired! Bit stressed by mocks. One year at St Mary's. Turn 22.

2009-12-07T23:09:00.002Z

I realise that I have told very few people anything meaningful about what I'm up to this year.

Well, a week in my life this this term has contained :
3h health promotion lecture
3h public health research methods lectures
1h conducting motley assortment of mini instru-mentalists
1h stats tutorial
1h stats lecture
2h banter with scm folk
6h core research methodologies lectures
(no, i don't know what that is either)
2h arabic class
8h timetabled project work
3h principles of public health
1h current research issues lectures
1h journal club

That's what my timetable says anyway. There's stuff for national scm (<< go and check out the shiny new website!), worrying about the state of the planet usw.

All-in-all, I'm being kept out of mischief.

A lot has happened since I got back here in September. I'm full of news ideas, new dreams, new worries. I'm really looking forward to having a few weeks to start to digest, consolidate and shape some meaningful output. A lot ties together, a lot connects. I am learning important lessons, and some it is my obligaiton to pass on if I can.

I really miss seeing patients though. The clinician's life is most definitely for me.

2009-11-18T21:08:00.004Z

How odd... I'm sure I posted yesterday about my frustration at lecturer absenteeism.

Anyway. Masa al'khayr one and all. I'm curled up on the sofa in front of Spooks, drinking a pot of chai, catching up with emails and downloading pictures from this year's workcamp in Romania.

I have chosen this picture because (1) Everyone looks happy (2) It reminds me of warmer times (3) My hair looks goooood :

2009-11-17T00:33:00.003Z

Have just proved to myself that I am still a medic really in 5 easy steps :

1) Idly take radial pulse
2) Decide it's irregular
3) Don stethoscope
4) Decide apex beat's displaced
5) Diagnose self with Class I (NYA) CCF.
(At least class I's the good kind...)

It's strangely reassuring to still be capable of such wild hypochondria.

It's been a while...

2009-11-03T20:30:00.001Z

...how's everybody doing?

I just unpacked the suitcase where I stash my winter-warmy-goodness. This post therefore has a lovely fleecy lining.

I find myself, somehow, in week 7 of my Public Health degree. What with that, dragging the kiddies through Beauty and the Beast (and other such orchestral classics), Arabic classes (ana George, ana bin Britanya, tasharrafna!), resurrecting SCM Glasgow, and (come to mention it) rocking out in the Regions Portfolio of the SCM General Council, I am quite busy enough to be getting along with, thank-you very much.

Plenty to do therefore, so back to work I go!

VERY LONG POST ALERT

2009-08-10T17:45:00.000+01:00

I write this sitting in a rather pleasant hostel in Budapest. Having spent the best part of 2 hours catching up on a week's worth (244) of blog posts, I decided it was about time I made some dent on the blogosphere again. So. One girl's story of an epic, and convolute, train voyage from Glasgow to Brasov (sadly devoid of pictures until I can work out Blogger in Magyar...)

Day 1 (31/07/08):
A short (4.5h!) and uneventful (I say uneventful, but actually fairly eventful now I come to think about it - not that I plan to tell you what happened mind, just that something did...) jaunt down to London with my motherly person. Chinese food, repacking and a banana loaf baked all for me!

Day 2 (01/08/08):
The journey from Boringville to London is incosequential enough to merit no mention, but seems to have got one anyway. 2 hours on the Eurostar saw me on the continent, and I spent a couple of hours soaking up the evening sun in Brussels, while drinking a beer. Then 3 hours on the DB train to Frankfurt Flugzeug, where I made friends with a woman who was literally moving house by train. I passed the time sitting on one of her many suitcases watching the world go by and chatting away to her in French.

When asked if 6 minutes was enough time to change trains in Frankfurt, the guard said 'Doch, this is Germany'. I made the connection with ease and poise, and was soon in my couchette at Stuttgart station ready to sleep until Budapest. My 8 year-old half-German, half-Hungarian roommate had other ideas however, and woke me at 5.45 to ask if I wanted to play cards with him. His mother fed me coffee and pastries so it turned out to be far from the worst sleeper journey I've experienced.

The two roommates who joined us in Wien were Romanians, heading home to Sibiu - luckily as it turned out - and upon being informed by the mother of the aforementioned 8 y/o that we were taking the same train gave me fruit and water and chatted to me in German until our train arrived.

For a wee while we were sitting in a coach with no AC and 'nam viz' (no water - never has my exceedingly limited Hungarian come in so useful) until the father of a wee German girl I was drawing pictures to colour in discovered that the next coach over was faring far better, so all was well.

All was well that is until nice-Romanian-couple came to find me with an English-speaking compatriot they'd roped in to help to tell me that (I think) the bridge between Brasov and Sibiu had collapsed. At any rate, the train was terminating at Sibiu, and I wouldn't be able to get to Brasov until 0330h. Nice-Romanian-couple were desolated on my behalf and offered me a place to stay.

Still, after a brief panic, I realised that not only do I know Sibiu, I'd also been to Medias (the connecting station) before, and that I really, really wanted to get to workcamp.

Day 3 (02/08/09) :
So...

After a couple of hours to stretch my legs and have a schnapps (Romanian courage) in Sibiu, I found the single creepiest looking train I've ever seen - an ollld CFR train standing in the pitch black.

I climbed (and I mean climbed, anyone's who's got on a CFR train from a no platform station will know what I mean) on board and found a group of old ladies sitting in a carriage. It was at this point that I let loose the full force of my Romanian :

'Salut'
'Buna'
'Medias? (point down at ground so as to indicate 'this train will take me to Medias?')
'Da'
'Multsumesc'

At this point the old ladies held frantic conference, which resulted in another epic exchange :

'Buna'
'Salut'
'Medias?' (point to me so as to indicate 'you are going to Medias?')
'Medias - Brasov' (hand gestures so as to indicate connection
'Brasov?'
'Da'

More old lady conferencing. Old lady number 2 approaches :

'Du (points at me) Brasov?'
'Da' (show her times of connecting trains)

Exclamation in Romanian, which I take to mean 'dear God, young girl wandering the streets of Brasov alone at 0330h in the morning!'

'Da. Friends. Freuden. Amigos.' (smile to indicate the warmth of loving relationship)
'Hmm'

There was no more conversation after that. Old lady number 3, who never spoke, continued to stare at me as though I was possessed by Satan.

When we arrived at Medias, old lady 1 reappeared next to me and held up 4 fingers (platform 4), nodded emphatically and said 'bon voyage!'

Finally at 0430h, when I had despaired of ever, ever arriving in Brasov, I got off the train to hear 'Georrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrge' and before I knew it Lizzie had pretty much demolished me with a hug.

The rest will wait for another time (as I'm sure you're much relieved to hear). There were just some stories here that I didn't want to forget. Sometimes it's more interesting to travel alone.

Other voices...

2009-07-15T22:02:00.003+01:00

I've been following the happenings of the CEC assembly via Twitter / the blog, and it stirred up an oft-voiced frustration.

Only the first day of the Assembly and already complaints are being made as to the under-representation of women and young people. As a woman involved in church ‘politics’ (and also studying medicine – still a male-dominated profession) all I can do is roll my eyes and say ‘what’s new?’. Not that anyone would ask my opinion anyway; what can I possibly hope to know about the world at the tender age of 21 (and a half)?

In the planning stages of every church event it is said that 'we really must allow the women and young people to contribute'. Not only a patronising statement, but, inevitably, a futile one. And why? Church hierarchy is necessary (for the sake of argument) to the running of a denomination - and the majority of those in positions of leadership (in most denominations) are men. But these leaders have no more ownership of their tradition than any member of it.

Women and young people shouldn’t only be invited for the sake of balance, out of a sense of duty. We should be welcomed, because we have something to say. We have something to say that you may not like – that doesn’t mean that we should not be allowed to say it. We have brains, faith and life experience just like you.

I for one am tired of having to nag, and shout, and repeat myself until I’m blue in the face to get my voice heard. I am one of the lucky ones though – if I kick up enough of a fuss I can have some small impact. In CEC terms I am one of the lucky ones because English is my mother tongue. On a global scale a university education, internet access (not to mention access to clean water) and the right to vote give me more of a voice than others can even dream of. And with that voice comes responsibility, but that is a sermon for another day...

We – man, woman, rich, poor, old, young, gay, straight, Orthodox, Catholic, shades of Protestant – are called to one hope. We hope, together. We hope in a Saviour who embraced ‘the other’.

I have said this so many times I almost tire of it. But each time I voice this frustration it shakes me out of my own complacency, and reminds me to seek out other voices. It reminds me to listen, really listen, even if I don’t like what I hear.

2009-06-18T20:26:00.003+01:00

I've had a pretty productive week. Mainly, I learnt to levitate :
Also, but decidedly less importantly, I passed my 3rd year exams and got a place to do a BMedSci in Public Health next year.

To celebrate, I finally got round to de-exam-cluttering my room. 2 hours and 3 bin bags later is ceases to pose any major health hazard.

I am much enjoying the community psychiatry block. I've discovered that my new favourite ward rounds involve getting the patient to come to you, while you sit in an armchair and drink tea. It's been great to gradually feel more and more part of the team, and to be able to contribute in meetings etc. Some heartbreaking stories, some great banter and some moments of absolute hilarity.

I was informed, very indignantly, by 3 separate patients yesterday, that I had a man's name. One of them still hugged me goodbye though!

Very excited for thePROJECT at the weekend - A day for the deliberate exploration of the arts, culture and faith. A comfortable place for insiders, outsiders and maybe especially those at the margins of the church.

Alas Sunday marks the last week that our lovely Shona will be at church, before she leaves to take her awesomeness to her new congregation.

So that's me!

How to make orange* soup...

2009-06-04T20:57:00.015+01:00

*the colour, not the fruit

Vegan friendly =] dedicated to Herb the herbivore to whom I keep promising a soup recipe.

Gather some ingredients. Generally you want a portion of protein, a portion of carbohydrate and a portion or two of fruit/veg for each serving. So for this (4 servings as a main course) I chose 2 cups of red lentils as my protein, 2 cups of brown rice for carbs, 2 peppers for my veg. You also want a large onion. For this recipe I add a tin of tomatoes, a sweet potato, 2 red chillies and a thumb size chunk of ginger. Pink chopping board optional, but awesome.
Find a decent sized pan, preferrably quite a heavy one with a nice thick base. (Then figure out how to get the damn thing out the cupboard).
Roughly chop the onion, top/tail and de-seed the chillies and chop them into tiny pieces, peel and chop the ginger into tiny pieces.

Put a large dollop of oil in the pan and put it on the heat. Wash your hands thoroughly, with washing up liquid - you don't want chilli juice in your eyes, trust me. Fill the kettle and put it on to boil.

Fry the onion, chilli and ginger.Peel the sweet potato (you can use a regular potato peeler) and chop it roughly into thumb-size pieces. Chop the peppers - don't worry about being neat, it's all going to be blended anyway...
Whack it all in the pan and give it a stir.At this point you want to check you remembered to boil the kettle.

Then chuck in your lentils and rice. Keep stirring it so it doesn't burn to the pan.

Yes, that is a Jack Daniels whisky glass.

Add the tomatoes and 3 cups of boiling water. Stir it all together.
Let it all come to the boil (big, slow bubbles) then pop a lid on it and leave it for about 1/2 hour. Keep an eye on it and give it a wee stir once in a while.

If it's boiling over, take the lid off. If things are sticking to the bottom, add some more water.

Once it's done, take it off the heat, add a couple more cups of water and blend to the consistency of your choice.Once it's blended you can keep it in the fridge for a good few days, or freeze it (best to split it into individual portions to make defrosting easier...)

When you're re-heating you can add some other veggie goodness to change it up a little. Today I put in a handful of frozen peas, but sweetcorn or spinach would work well also.
Eat with yummy bread...

Omnomnom...

I'm back...

2009-06-04T11:31:00.003+01:00

So, nearly 2 weeks after exams finished, what on earth have I been up to? Bullet points methinks...

-Firstly, during exams I managed to (in no particular order) pull the ear off the auroscope dummy, hit myself in the nose with my tendon hammer and introduce myself variously as a first year, a second year and errrr... one of the GPs here, I think. I also spectacularly failed to find a lump in the most ridiculous plastic-breast-things I've ever seen.

-Also, you know you're a medic when... the last line in your exam paper is the patient died. You know you're a Glasgow medic when... the last line is the patient died at home surrounded by friends and family who had been appropriately counselled.

-Saw In the Loop. Amazing. Best film ever. Learnt some wonderful new insults which I have struggled to avoid using in relation to a certain former minister of mine.

-Enjoyed the shortest post-exam holiday of all time (a leisurely three days), of which a good portion was spent studying.

-Started my next module, community psychiatry. Soundtrack in the car has been somewhat interesting (spotify 'whalefish' by mr scruff for illustration). I am forcefed tea on an approximately hourly basis and spend a couple of soul destroying hours every day reading through the world's longest patient file. Learning a lot, especially about schizophrenia, and looking forward joining in with art therapy on Friday.

-Eating lots of ice cream. Well ice pseudo-cream. Realised how much I love living in the city when I was able to buy vegan ice cream when the fancy took me at quarter to midnight one evening.

-Still entirely in love with St Mary's (or should I say the Episcopal Cathedral of Saint Mary the Virgin?). There is so much love I don't even know where to start, so instead I shall tell you that if you ever visit you should look out for the rocket painted on the ceiling.

-Myself and Holly (with regular guest appearances by Beth, Coralie and Emma) have perfected evensongchipsday. It is a thing wonderful in its simplicity. First there is evensong, then there are chips. Sometimes pakora. Then there is Desperate Housewives (although, the season finale aired last week...*sob*).

-The first barbeque of the season was rained inside, but was awesome nonetheless. Then there was Emma's wonderfully sunny birthday barbeque.

All-in-all a rather spiffy couple of weeks. I have however failed in a most epic manner to return my room to something approaching tidy. I should get on that...

Winter photos that make me smile...

2009-06-03T22:12:00.012+01:00

Lutzi at my birthday
Stevo bashing out some carols
Dad and Marcus taking a break from carol singing
Emma chilling out in the awesome chair
Emma and Holly with post-yogi chai smilesCat the cookie monster

Hannah the fencing queenAndy - high five!
And finally George being a tad emo...

My Sunday afternoon...

2009-06-01T23:44:00.007+01:00

We sat on a train, but it didn't go anywhere, so we took a picture.Then we went in a car, and it did go somewhere, and this is where it went :

There was a paddling pool...
And Uncle Robert got splashed...
(as did the author, but the camera was unfortunately misplaced at that point in proceedings...)

A lovely afternoon was had by all.
Happy birthday Emma!

2009-05-13T22:54:00.003+01:00

If you happen to bump into me in the next 10 days, please overlook the fact that I will compulsively wash my hands before gabbling hellonamegeorginathirdyearmedicaskyouquestionsok?

It's that strange time of year again. Exams are looming and we medics have even less chat than usual. We wander round with a strange, and slightly manic, glazed expression muttering strings of greekylatiny oddness that sound like magic spells, but are in fact the buzzwords of such-and-such-itis-mc-opathy acanthosis, leucocytosis, hyperchromasia. That's not to mention the random strings of letters MI, MEOS, Gly380Arg, COPD. Please don't get me started on drug names. According to my rheumatology notes, injecting God into muscles can help with arthritis. That's some interesting theology right there. Hmm.

Aside from all things medic there's been awesome (new since January) church, and I'm still trying to drag the orchestra brats and bratettes through Ode to Joy. That and lots of girlybrainlessamerican tv, too much diet coke and the occassional hot-cross-bun.

You can find me hanging out on Twitter if you're missing my bloggyblatherings too much - I'm @george_ina - I'll be back after exams, promise.

Today/Tonight/Tomorrow

2009-04-02T03:56:00.001+01:00

Today i have talked to friends who are struggling with faith, pregnancy, mental illness, sexuality - all people i care about very much, torn apart by stigma and prejudice.

Today i have been told about a little girl dying in Tanzania because she couldn't get iron supplements, and patients in the UK demanding local anaesthetic to avoid the mild discomfort of a blood test.

Today i have heard horrendous stories about the police breaking up a peaceful protest, with a simple message - climate change kills, and there's something we can do about it.

Some nights i want to sit up to the wee hours putting the world to rights - talking plans and dreams and solutions. Tonight i have none.

Tomorrow i will regroup, and find the inspiration in these stories i've been told. Tonight i am tired and afraid.

The world seems a big, scary, messy, hurting place. Tonight i am crying, because that is all i can do.

Assist our Song...

2009-02-22T21:08:00.004Z

I find many hymns amusing. There are only a handful that amuse me to the point of laughter. There is only one which wakes in me a silent giggling fit to the point that I have yet to ever make it through the first verse. It is this :

Ye holy angels bright,
who wait at God's right hand,
or through the realms of light
fly at your Lord's command,
assist our song,

So far, all well and good, yes? At this point I should remind you that this hymn is always pitched in a ridiculously high key. And that henceforth the melody ascends in a stepwise manner to a note slightly left of the limits of human hearing. This is important, because the rest of the words go like this :

for else the theme
too high doth seem
for mortal tongue.

I've never made it beyond 'else'. Ever.

What gets me is this : noone else seems to find it funny.

Richard Baxter, John Darwall, I salute you.

2009-02-20T23:27:00.002Z

I guess that for lots of us who grew up in the churchy families it's hard to pinpoint the moment when our parents' faith became our own.

Tonight is the closest I have to that moment.

It was about this time, and everyone was asleep. My life had exploded around me and I was waiting for the fallout. It wasn't so much a triumphant realisation as an admission of defeat.

Six years on and I've got the same song stuck in my head.

Take, oh take me as I am.
Summon out what I shall be.
Set a seal upon my heart, and live in me.

Those words...

2009-02-10T23:17:00.002Z

At the end of a long day, when I find myself praying Compline, I am so unutterably thankful for the familiarity of it all. These same prayers have been spoken for centuries. The pattern of a faith. They speak of community and catholicism. The psalms form easily, each phrase well-worn by years of repetition.

It is that same ease that causes concern I suppose. We are afraid, and rightly so, of transcendence lost as tradition becomes habit. But can we afford to forget those words?

Those words that we absorbed as children, knee-high to the wisdom of the church.
Those words we don't remember learning and yet
those words we find ourselves whispering when we have none of our own.
Those words my Grandad remembered when everything else had faded.

Those words that have challenged and comforted the generations before us.
The communion of saints.
Those words that will outlast us as dawn leads on another day - the voice of prayer is never silent, nor dies the strain of praise away.

Wisdom cries out in the street...

2009-02-10T17:45:00.002Z

It was freezing on Sunday. Hovering around zero, threatening snow.

I was talking to a homeless guy. Words cannot come near to telling you how cold he looked.

I asked him how he was doing. He said :
Ach, you know, you take the bad with the good.

Hard to argue with that really.

I'm writing this in a post-ironic kind of a way. Honest...

2009-02-07T12:51:00.004Z

Can I stick my neck out here and say that I'm really enjoying reading everyone's 25 things on facebook? I won't tag anyone, because it's annoying, but if you secretly would really like to take a swing at it, consider yourself tagged.

1 A Honda ad described the place I grew up in as 'one of the most inhospitable places on earth'.
2 I like right angles.
3 At my most Protestant around Catholics.
4 At my most Catholic around Protestants.
5 I like digging holes.
6 I get incredibly guilty every time I say 'the patient had xyz, it was really cool.
7 Can't drive / Won't drive.
8 My first ever email was sent from the Millenium Dome.
9 Old ladies like to tell me their life story on the bus.
10 Sometimes I choose my socks according to the colour of the liturgical season.
11 I have been a herbivore for a year and a day.
12 This has led to an irrational fear of cheese.
13 I'm at my happiest singing around a campfire.
14 I can recite entire episodes of the West Wing.
15 And significant chunks of H2G2 (radio...).
16 I don't sleep as much as people would like me to.
17 My ranting tends to focus on bad grammar, public health, trains and the church.
18 I could swear at you in Romanian.
19 Or bless you in Hungarian.
20 I could never live in the countryside - it's too quiet.
21 Washing-up is incredibly soothing.
22 Drying-up is incredibly aggravating.
23 One summer I taught myself the trumpet.
24 If I could think of words to describe how awesome my friends are, they would go here.
25 Analogue watches confuse me.
26 This is me sticking it to the man.

2009-02-04T11:42:00.002Z

We are a great fan of nonsensical traditions here in George-land, so, as has become my wont, I shall announce, without further ado, the completion of the Long and Completely Pointless coursework - nice and warm, fresh out of the printer.

Nick Harper / Duke Special - Classic Grand

2009-01-23T13:14:00.008Z

Yesterday me and Holly went to a gig.

We got very excited...
Eeeeeeeeeee...

And then this happened.....and that was like proper wow.

And then this happened...
...and that was like wow, and then on the last song it was like I really feel the need to give that guy a Mini Mental State, but still wow.

It was an awesome night. Although, in retrospect, when this is happening...
...it is a bad idea to lean on the amp.

Just for me...

2009-01-20T23:21:00.004Z

Bad stuff and insomnia are being mutually aggravating. But it's only Tuesday, and already this week tiny glimmers of awesomeness keep catching at my heart.

I've been forming a wee orchestra at a primary school since November. It's been interesting. Small group, big variety of instruments and abilities. Yesterday was the first time we played a proper piece (albeit 8 bars long) in 4 parts. But the best bit was when everyone finished at the same time (!) and the tiniest one, who is only 8, and has a wee pink guitar, just breathed wow.

I remembered that we med students do have a role in the team. Because sometimes in the hustle and bustle of specialists and operations and medicines, what the patient really wants is to be able to hear what's going on. And hearing aids, at least, are easily fixed.

In Bible group tonight we were on Mark. And I got to hear someone who's never read the story of the crucifixion before remind me that the cross whispers humility. Those who are first shall be last.

Surrounded by chaos, little moments of hope in a confused and confusing world.

Heathrow

2009-01-15T13:16:00.004Z

Surprised? No. And can I even be disappointed when I didn't expect anything different?

If you haven't heard, or assumed, then Heathrow's third runway has been approved, with a cursory nod in the direction of environmental concerns.

Rumours are circulating as to Hilary Benn's possible resignation.

What now?

Well, there's the plot.

John Vidal has been suggesting some other options. My personal favourite is a mass citizen's arrest of all BAA directors...

Edit : Anyone in London (or thereabouts) on Saturday -Heathrow flashmob 12 noon. Details...

2009-01-14T19:20:00.003Z

I find it really hard to pray about medical stuff.

For staff, patients, other students, it's that really odd/awkward kind of prayer whereby you know so much about one aspect of a person, and nothing about the rest.

For public health stuff, for epidemics, for the injustice of a world where people are dying of too much while others die of not enough, I have no words because I cannot start to understand.

I mutter some clichés, the same tired old lines. I try to find some liturgy. Then I try to write some. I always fail.

Once in a while I get home from clinical practice or I'm struggling through notes on some horrific disease and I burst into tears.

Once in a while a lecturer is so enthusiastic, or a GP takes a painful history so gently, or someone gives an injection so skillfully that patient doesn't feel it, and I can't help but whisper wow.

Once in a while, I forget to worry about the words, and I remember how to pray.

Heathrow - Mad Hatter's Tea-Party?

2009-01-12T23:23:00.005Z

Another review of 2008 - from Nature :
"What we've learned in 2008"
Amanda Leigh Mascarelli looks at how far our understanding of climate change has come in the past 12 months.

And looking ahead to 2009 - OneClimate explains the run up to Copenhagen.

Today eyes have turned to Heathrow for the Climate Rush on terminal 1. Protestors dressed in Edwardian clothing in homage to the Suffragettes, and art of all varieties was provided by the new artist collective ARTPORT. Keep an eye out for news coverage.

Why the fuss about Heathrow? Let greenpeace explain.

Inydmedia's coverage also mentions the response to Plane Stupid's action at Stanstead, including their ISP taking down their site.

And the Guardian ends with a warning:
"It has been as fluffy as fluffy can be, and by the end even the police are beginning to look a little mellow...It won't all be so peaceful, however, if the government makes what these people believes is the wrong decision next week. As Sue Morgan (not someone who would usually put me in mind of the Godfather) puts it: "If the third runway goes ahead there will be a lot of a protest. And it won't all be sitting down like this. With cups of tea." You heard her."

Also at Heathrow, greenpeace UK has purchased a plot of land at the proposed site for the third runway. "Join the plot to stop airport expansion"

Climate Change : A New Year

2009-01-05T18:26:00.005Z

Someone asked me a while ago to think about doing some sort of regular round-up of climate change bits 'n' bobs. Let me know what you think...

Firstly, a sobering reminder. In 2008 World Health Day focused on the impact that climate change will have and is having on health. It is estimated that 220,000 people died in 2008 as a result of natural disaster.

Here is a nice wee review of all that was interesting, ridiculous and downright disturbing in the world of climate science in 2008.

"From today, based on the best estimates available, we have eight years to head-off potentially uncontrollable climatic upheavel. What can happen in eight years? Quite a lot, actually. A world war can begin, and end. Two, in fact. [read more...]
(Andrew Simms, www.guardian.co.uk, 01/01/09)

Here Jarvis Cocker interviews Lord Stern about climate change - links to the credit crunch and hopes/predictions for the future . (5.43 mins)

From onehundredmonths, (now 95) some suggestions if you're still dithering over NYRs:

Cut down on flying. Probably the biggest single thing you can do to cut your carbon footprint, especially if it's a long-haul flight.
Switch your home electricity to a renewable energy supplier. Spend your money on the solution, not the problem.
Eat local, seasonal and organic whenever possible. Run your body on clean, healthy and low carbon energy.
Eat less meat. Producing meat creates lots of emissions, even when they aren't chopping down rain forests for land to graze the cattle.
Turn down your heating. Boring maybe, but it's so easy and the only thing you'll notice is a lower energy bill.
Buy nothing new. There's more than enough stuff out there already. Try it.

"The Countdown to Copenhagen – and the most important climate talks in history – has begun. Join a growing worldwide movement and help seal a fair and effective global climate deal in 2009." Head to the Christian Aid website and take the pledge.

But, over in the Independent, some leading climate scientists are wondering if we can do enough. Plan B?

Some vaguely resolution-type-things...

2009-01-03T17:17:00.002Z

It is with a suitable amount of eye-rolling at the predictability of all this that I bring you George's vaguely resolution-type-things to coincide with the start of 2009 (which according to wikipedia is the current anno domini according to the Gregorian calendar)*

Most of these are continuation of things I've been trying to do anyhow, but there is something to be said for accountability and whatnot.

Ladies, gentlemen, small furry creatures from Alpha-Centauri; this year I shall endeavour to (in no particular order) :

Read 50 'proper' books
Améliorer mon français (is that even the correct verb? Hmm)
Stay vegan
Take packed lunches every day
Read the Bible straight through
Pass 3rd year
Journal or blog every day
Not fly (in a plane; if I learn to fly without one, that is allowed)

*aka. the international year of astronomy, natural fibres and reconciliation; the year of St Paul and Calvin; the year that shall bring Obama's inauguration and the UNCOP15 in Copenhagen...

R&R...

2009-01-02T14:20:00.003Z

I've had somewhat of an impromptu blogging hiatus since my last. I was at the point where I felt like my output was exceeding my input, having not really stopped to breathe since I was in London for Easter. I've spent a couple of weeks reading a lot, listening to a lot of new music, watching my fair share of TV, catching up with long-neglected friends and sleeping 12 hours a day. The old brain has enjoyed having some new stuff to chew on in peace, and is contentedly getting to grips with Wesleyan theology.

Next week brings uni, with all its associated gallivanting, but for this afternoon there are the adventures of a certain Mr Copperfield to attend to, and tonight I shall cook for Emma and Fran.

A Christmas Eve Compline...

2008-12-24T00:47:00.004Z

The bustle of the day has died away.
Still our minds, focussed on the practicalities of tomorrow.
Still our minds to focus on the mystery of tonight.

Almighty God, fragile human – the impossible reality of your incarnation is so far beyond our grasp that we get lost in the ‘how’s and the ‘why’s of it. We only know that somehow the whole of time pivots on this moment. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, but a busy world barely noticed.

Refresh our jaded eyes to read those old, familiar stories once again.

In the sanctuary, a priest is struck dumb by an angel.
God who speaks in silence : when we want to argue our point loudest and longest, you call us to listen.

Teenager becomes woman in an instant “let it be with me according to your word”.
We are proud and jealous guardians of our self-determination, but you call us to obedience.

Young father, exposed to public disgrace for standing by his fiancé.
God-with-us in the chaos of doubt and questioning, you call us to faith.

Carpenter’s son, not the long-hoped-for warrior.
In a world of competition and conflict, you call us to be peacemakers.

Old man finds peace in the consolation of his people, after years of waiting.
God who transcends time, we want everything at the instant of asking, but you call us to patience.

All-powerful God, your incarnation – the ultimate vulnerability – is our ultimate challenge.
We hide behind our veneer of strength, but you call us to radical gentleness.

This is the counter-culture of your kingdom.

The Word became flesh.
Laughing, loving, embracing, joyful flesh.
Greater love has no man than this – that he lays down his life for his friends.
Broken, hurting, weeping, painful flesh.
My God, my God – why have you forsaken me?

The Word dwelt among us.
He worked with us, and walked with us.
Come, follow me.
He wept with us, and comforted us.
Do not be afraid.
He ate with us, and drank with us.
Do this in remembrance of me.
He taught us and prayed with us.
When you pray, say this : Our Father...

Joy to the world! Her Lord is come and will come. Almighty God, fragile human - we rejoice in you, and in you we will find our peace.

George Walsh

With the angelic host proclaim...

2008-12-21T14:04:00.003Z

I love carols. It's that one time of year that pretty much every church rediscovers the wonders of old-school 4 part hymn-singing. This year I'm on a mission to be more aware of the words. I could play the bassline to most carols back-to-front whilst suspended upside down and blindfolded, but the words beyond the first verse become some sort of nonsensical amalgamation in my head ("Offspring of a virgin's wings" being a notable example).

BUT. There are some carols that I can't stand. There are the naff (Away in a Manger), the theologically interesting (I Saw Three Ships) and the musically painful (We Three Kings).* The worst culprits are a combination of all three. 'In the Bleak Midwinter' makes me lose the will to live.

For the rest of the week my head will be full of things like for 'O Little Town' the Methodists hold the for 2.5 hours, whereas the Catholics are fairly business-like about it.

*This is not to mention rhyming, or lack thereof. Make safe the way that leads on high / And close the path to misery. (would maybe just about work in a really strong Cockney acent...)

On broadening my vocabulary...

2008-12-21T02:31:00.003Z

I've learnt lots of new words over the past couple of days 'soteriology' 'concatenation' 'corollaries' 'effulgent' to name just a few (courtesy of Collins' 'The Thelogy of John Wesley). I love new words. I love the mystery of them. I love that moment of 'wow, there's actually a word for that?'. One of my favourite things about theology books is the smattering of Latin that's almost beyond concise translation. Things like 'parte ante vs. parte post'. Similar to the way that 'schadenfreude' and 'deja-vu' are best left untranslated.

Anyhow.

Recently I've been pondering what it is about specific people that I find interesting, and which qualities I see in others that I seek to emulate. Gentleness has been a big theme, but I think that requires more thought and then a post to itself.

Tonight the quality I was thinking about was earnestness. Musings took an interesting tangent, when I realised that I don't remember ever learning what the word 'earnest' means. Nor do I think I could define it. It's an intangible quality that somewhere along the way, somehow, a word was put to. Once I started thinking about it, I realised how true that is for a lot of words. Some concepts are more concrete - I don't remember learning the word 'nose', but I can understand how I came to know it. I wonder how, and by whom the word 'earnest' was taught to me, and others.

By no means original thoughts, but interesting nonetheless.

I have discovered the holy grail...

2008-12-20T12:24:00.005Z

...of porridge.

My life thus far has merely been a build-up to this moment.

There has been jam, there has been chocolate. PB and raisins. Crumbled ginger nuts. Maple syrup. Coffee. Fresh berries in the summer time. A little muesli for some crunch.

There was even an experiment with Marmite, but I don't like to talk about it.

The secret to happiness in a bowl?

A couple of teaspoons of mincemeat. Mmm.

Contemplative fusion...

2008-12-20T02:18:00.002Z

I wish my middle-of-the-night musings were more profound. Or even just useful. I only ever feel inspired when I'm supposed to be concentrating on something else - which explains why so many of my lecture handouts are covered in theological arguement stream-of-conciousness style, and why I work most efficiently when I should be asleep.

I'm trying to harness my tendency for self-reflection in the wee hours to a good end. As ever, my inner Methodist (who lives in a tiny tree just in front of my occipital lobe), and my inner Catholic (who takes my allergy to incense as a personal affront) had seemingly clashing ideas on the subject.

The inner Methodist (pleasantly satiated by an afternoon perusing a textbook of Wesleyan theology) falls more on the side of a critical self-awareness. The idea of examining our actions/thoughts/feelings to see where we are falling short of holiness, perfection even.

The inner Catholic is a great fan of the Ignatian-style examen - learning a greater awareness of God in the day-to-day. Giving thanks for what was good, and asking blessing on difficult situations.

In reality, most of us come down somewhere in the middle *. Because, at the end of the day, awareness of self and awareness of God are almost impossible to separate.

The upshot of this internal ecumenical dialogue is that I'm going to use some of Ignatius' spiritual exercises as springboards for journalling for a while.

This post is brought to you from the keyboard of George 'if there's a theological fence to be found, I'll sit on it' Walsh.

* 'somewhere in the middle' = space most people assume to be occupied by my inner Episcopalian

I lift up my eyes to the hills...

2008-12-17T18:26:00.003Z

Heading back to England tonight for a wee while. I went and had a last look at one of my favourite view this afternoon. Out back of the old university buildings you can see right over the city to the hills. Each time I go up there, I think of this :

I lift up my eyes to the hills - from where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.
He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.

(NRSV - Psalm 121)

There is only hope...

2008-12-14T21:45:00.003Z

This week I've been having a (belated) Obama celebration by watching season 6 of the West Wing. This is part of the speech that Santos (the Obama character) gives to start his campaign for presidency.

" I am here to tell you : hope is real. In a life of trials, in a world of challenges - hope is real. In a country where families go without healthcare, where some go without food, some don’t even have a hope to speak of – hope is real. In a time of global chaos and instability, where our faiths collide as often as our weapons – hope is real. Hope is what gives us the courage to take on our greatest challenges, to move forward together. We live in cynical times, I know that, but hope is not up for debate. There is such a thing as false science, such a thing as false promises...but there is no such thing as false hope. There is only hope. "

Tis the season of (not-so-)patient expectancy, and carol services. Tonight I felt like I was hearing these words for the first time 'the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight'.

2008-12-12T04:01:00.002Z

The moon is so bright tonight and the garden is magic with ice. The glow of the city in the distance is shimmering through the trees.

So strange to think that at this time a few months ago the sun would be creeping its way to morning.

Of skittles, blasphemy and pamphlet wars...

2008-12-11T23:48:00.003Z

I was just idly googling (as one does while eating skittles, listening to HMS Pinafore and watching Mean Girls) and happened upon this :

"Walsh vomited worth in one hour more filth and blasphemy than Luther and Calivin together in three years"

[...the C17th Franciscan monk excommunicated for his political affiliations. Apparently he engaged in a pamphlet war with the so called 'hammer of the Catholics'. Pamphlet wars sound like fun.]