That in an act of callous disregard for your moral and ethical well being – she has fled the Raccoon coop for an entire week. Thoughtless of me, I know, but too late to let the dogs out, the scent is long gone.

Since the early hours of this morning, Ms Raccoon has been poking her bony finger into Mr G’s back and demanding to know whether ‘it is nearly time to go yet’…finally with an exasperated roar of ‘for God’s sake woman’ he agreed to rise and make the tea, put the rubbish out, make my breakfast, pack the van with three ton of medication, along with all his other morning duties, and drive me the 1000 odd kilometres – to Jersey! Naturally as soon as he was ready to leave, I fired up the computer and demanded silence whilst I penned this.

Jersey in January may seem an odd choice; I am actually looking forward to the grey skies, the 100 mile an hour winds, the long faces, the soggy fish and chips, and the mangled English as spoken by everyone doing a job which entails getting up in the morning and putting in a hard day’s work. I’ve thrown my wellie boots in the back of the van, the only thick jumper I now possess (still t-shirt weather here!) and a woolie hat to cover my bald pate…and we’ve gone.

Please keep the bar clean, and be polite to any strangers. Back on the 16th. Be there.

Ms Raccoon regrets… is a post from: Anna Raccoon

I heard news of my (thankfully, very thankfully) ex-brother in law this afternoon. The youngest of the clan.

He was 19 when I first knew him. 4 years younger than me. A gilded youth with long flowing blonde locks, and an arrogant stride. You might have thought he was an aspiring rock star if you met him in the street.

He had never held a job; apparently this was because he had had the ‘misfortune’ to grow up in Liverpool, where it was ‘impossible’ to get a job. Others managed, but not he.

Now he had arrived in London to join his elder brothers in the family enterprise. They had established a thriving business in South London, just this side of legal. They were Scousers after all.

He was the youngest of the family, by some ten years. An afterthought, as they say oop North. The ‘baby’ brother, who had to be ‘looked after’.

This took the form of not minding when he didn’t get into work until 11.30 or so. After all, hadn’t they all been out drinking the night before? Somehow others managed to stagger in with a hangover, but not Wee Willie. He would make a coffee or two, lean on a broom for support, and not come to life until the doors shut at midday and we all went off to the local cafe for lunch. There was a tab kept in the cafe, so no need for Willie to put his hand in his pocket. The ‘brothers Grimm’ took care of that at the end of the week.

He might borrow his brother’s car in the afternoon, go and collect spares, or some similar light employment, but he was never in the ‘thick of it’. He was always the first to go back to the house.

Took great pride in his appearance did Wee Willie. Had to have the first bath, always wore fresh clothes every day. I soon learned that there was no point in me refusing to wait on his laundry requirements hand and foot – he merely borrowed one of his brother’s best shirt and jeans if I refused to mother him. Nobody but me seemed to mind.

He would arrive back in the cafe for his evening meal long before his brothers. On their tab of course. Since he had finished eating, he might as well wait for them in the pub, natch? The pub ran a tab as well. It is a Liverpool tradition that the first round is written down on a beer mat, and merely repeated each time ‘someone’ had finished their drink. Guess who always finished first? You settle up at the end of the evening. Or at least, the Brothers Grimm did. Wee Willie never seemed to have any money left from his ‘wages’.

He managed about eighteen months of this existence. His very first job. Then he was done for drinking and driving – for the second time. Three months in Wormwood Scrubs beckoned. His long locks were cut off, and he wept. A meeting was arranged with the prison psychiatrist. There he explained that he had never had a proper job because of his long hair. He had the long hair because his ears stuck out. (I kid you not).

He was (and I’m still spitting tacks 40 years later!) transferred to the local hospital, during his jail spell, where plastic surgery was performed on his precious little ears. I would cheerfully have pinned them back for him, but the NHS did it instead.

When he was released, he was in a huff with his brothers; they should have got him a better solicitor apparently, all their fault that he had landed up in jail. He stalked off to live with one of his many girlfriends. She had a good job and a flat. He had his unemployment benefit. He never did work again. Never.

After a few years, a few more girlfriends supporting him, a few more years on the dole, he acquired his own council flat. A job ‘on the black’ as a part time potman in return for free beer, and incredibly, Disability Living Allowance, since he was now officially an alcoholic. Latterly, this has been a the rate of £120 a week. 40 years worth.

He is now 58. Never had a proper job – and just been captured by the Independent Tribunals which are deciding who can work and who cannot.

They, I am utterly delighted to say, have decided that being an alcoholic is no bar to employment in his case, and cut his allowance down to £68 a week. He is so frightened that they might find him a job that he has fled back to Liverpool, where he is quite sure that no employment can be found for a 58 year old, fat as a Tick, bone idle, Scouse, even with his ears pinned back.

He has moved in with his single older, older, brother, (he’s no longer so attractive to the ladies – God knows how many kids he’s fathered over the years) got his name on the rent book, and will, average life spans being what they are, shortly inherit a three bedroomed council house in Liverpool. There he will wait out the 7 years until he gets his pension – one of the advantages of having never had a job is that he has a full record of credited contributions and will get a full pension; and housing benefit; and heating allowance, and all the other things that a compassionate populace pay for our elderly impoverished pensioners.

At least the nation is £50 a week better off as a result of one of these ‘totally unfair’ tribunals. Nothing else has ever impeded his progress through life as a Slice of Pond Life.

He actually thought I might ‘help him out’ for old times sake – on account of ‘it’s awright for you, you’ve always been so lucky’.

Yep, that’s the difference Wee Willie, luck, bucket loads of it. In fact I’m the luckiest person I know.

How many ‘Wee Willie’s’ are out there, do you think? Solution?

A Slice of Pond Life. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

I posted yesterday on the different attitude between France and the UK to families being present in a hospital and helping nurse their relatives. I hadn’t appreciated until the comments started coming in – and a couple of e-mails overnight from the continent, that the UK attitude seems to be exclusive to – the UK!

I have done a little Googling and cannot find any other European country that keeps the family so firmly at the outer door of the hospital.  It set me thinking, and about 3am I was hit by a thunderbolt…as you are.

Crikey, but I’m slow on the uptake I thought. As I do frequently.

I have said before that what you get by way of a post each morning is whatever is on my mind when I wake up – so it is today; forgive the personal nature of this post – there is a sound reason for it.

Half a century ago, said Methuselah, for it is I, I had a very useful attribute. If I arranged myself so that my head was lower than my body, my cheek swelled up in a perfect imitation of a gumboil – a fashionable affliction in those days and mighty useful for getting out of PE on a freezing morning. Eventually I was rumbled, and packed off to the Doctor by my Father. I had a tumour in my saliva gland and it was removed – in rather rudimentary fashion. It left me with a hideous scar on the side of my face.

I had never had a ‘relationship’ with my Mother. No one knows why, those who did are long since dead; I suspect post natal depression myself, being some 13lb at birth I don’t suppose it was happy experience for her in those post war days, and she took to her bed and refused to have anything to do with me.

I had gone off to boarding school at 3, the Frobelian residential kindergarten run by the Sisters of the Sacre Coeur in St Peters Port. It solved my Father’s problem of caring for me and maintaining his job, but did nothing for my non-existent relationship with my Mother.

‘Disfigured’ five years later, was the last straw for her, and I was packed off to the John Radcliffe hospital for plastic surgery. (Yes, that photograph of me on the contacts page is post plastic surgery, so let’s get the jokes over and done with!)

I was all of eight years old, and had already spent a month in hospital away from my family – the notion that children might want their parents around when they were sick was light years in the future. Now I was looking forward to months in another hospital – plastic surgery was a long and tortuous process in those days, many months as grafts healed. 50 years later I still remember being tied to the bed to prevent me pulling out the various tubes. Give me a modicum of stress and I can have a decent nightmare about it to this day.

My Mother was only too happy to comply with the restricted visiting, she had no wish to be distressed by witnessing my appearance, and I, too young to have knowledge of the fact that the hospital discouraged visiting, was only too happy to accept that I was just not fit to be seen. Besides, she was busy getting pregnant again, yet another excuse to languish in bed.

By the time I was pronounced ‘cured’ and due for release, it was to the news that she was about to give birth and I was to go to my grand-mothers house in Liverpool. From there I went back and forth to boarding school, interspersed with stays with various friends of my Father’s in the school holidays. Visits ‘home’ were the occasion to have beds made up specially for my appearance, never again was there to be a room known as ‘mine’. I didn’t belong there; I was a ‘visitor’.

It was, you can see, a mightily fractured relationship.  One that I firmly accounted for by my physical ‘appearance’.

When I was 12, another phone call from my Father to my boarding school alerted me to the fact that I had just acquired another brother, and I despaired of ever returning home. So much so, that I am ashamed now to admit, I swallowed a bottle of aspirin to be done with the whole ghastly business.  I could see no future for myself.

It is hard to speak of these things, even now, but this was before the Suicide Act, a time when you were either ‘mad’ or ‘bad’ for such actions. I guess no one had the heart to decide that at 12 I was actually ‘bad’, so ‘mad’ was the only other option. I was packed off to the Long Grove Mental Hospital in Epsom.

There was no such thing as a children’s ward, they didn’t exist. It is hard to put into words how grim it actually was. One day I may get round to writing about it; today is not the day.

It didn’t last long, about two months I think – one day a chink in their security appeared and I legged it – in the company of another patient who was to be my only friend for some years. I did get caught once, and sent off to a children’s home, but that didn’t last long either – a first floor drainpipe held no terrors for me after the experiences I had had so far.

The point of all this is not to detail ‘what a terrible childhood’ I had, but that I realised last night what a huge impact the NHS system of not allowing, not wanting, not encouraging, families to be part and parcel of life in hospital can have on a person. My parents are long since dead, but to this day I have no relationship with my two younger brothers, nor did I ever have again with my parents. It certainly left its mark on me – and turned me into a Libertarian long before I ever knew such a word existed.

Wild horses wouldn’t persuade me to rely on the State to care for me, or support me – and as I thought that, came the blinding flash of insight.

Of course, who brought in the NHS? The Fabians, the Socialists. The exclusion of families from hospitals is nothing more than an early example of the Fabian ideology that wishes to see families torn apart and everyone turning to the State as chief carer, I had never connected ‘visiting times’ with politics before.

Probably because I had never realised before that other countries did it differently.

*No, the picture isn’t me – it was the only one I could find of a similar vintage hospital bed!

Past Lives and the NHS. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Do you ever have days when it all goes wrong?

I was all ready to go home last Friday; scrubbed, showered, dressed, packed, taxi arrived, waved off into lift on the second floor.

By the time the lift arrived on the ground floor I was unconscious. Don’t ask me – I was out of it!

Somehow my favourite little Sicilian taxi driver who is knee high to a grasshopper and ankle high to a Raccoon, dragged me out of the lift and pausing only to gather up my purse and hospital papers, legged it – stage left – to get help. The sharp eyed reader will have noticed his error.

The next occupants of the lift, somewhat bemused to find carrier bags full of Heinz baked beans, were even more bemused to discover their exit blocked by a large comatose woman, head resting on a panama hat. No identification, no sign of life. They tore off to the right and found a nurse with a trolley – I was loaded up and sped off God knows where.

Which left my pint-sized Sicilian running round the hospital clutching my purse, babbling an unlikely tale of having temporarily borrowed it from an unconscious Raccoon who belonged in his taxi but was now nowhere to be found.

No one does hysteria quite like a traumatised Sicilian taxi driver with an unpaid fare.

Eventually we were reunited back on the second floor where he fell sobbing into the arms of his fare and alibi to such effect that he was believed to be my husband. I was sobbing and clutching him too, if for no other reason than I believed him to be the only person in this foreign land who spoke English.

“They want to know how you feel,” he said. What kind of a damn fool question is that?

“Like swapping places with Prescott’s hemorrhoids would be an improvement!” I said. It got a tad confused in the translation, I fear.

I asked him to fire the only weapon left in my armoury – telephone he who is contractually obliged to shoulder the blame for everything up to and including the fall of St Petersburg.

“I can’t come home; I’m wired into the National Grid, I’ve got no blood pressure, they’re all shouting at me in French, do something”, I commanded.

You’d think after all these years he would know better than to interrupt a rant; but the damn fool spoke, honestly!

“I’ll just put the video on for the qualifying and………”

Well, I hung up on him, obviously.

Hours later they had inched my blood pressure up to 80 over some thing and I thought I might aspire to a life swap with Prescott’s left testicle instead, when the door opened and Mr G hove into view pushing a wheelchair.

“Come on Gollum, I’ve got permission to take you out for half an hour!”

He parked me in the petit jardin overlooking our camping car and disappeared into the back. The unmistakable scent of bacon wafted over me. I thought was hallucinating.

He was collecting a small audience, admiring the camping car or more probably, that rarity around here, his hair…..when I heard him say “close your eyes”.

When I opened them, a table had appeared, a bottle of HP sauce – the genuine article, a mug of Yorkshire tea, and a bacon sandwich was in front of me – there was a ripple of applause from the audience. If you squint your eyes and focus on the HP sauce bottle, tell yourself the roar of the air conditioning is the crash of waves, listen to the babble of foreign tongues all around you – you could be on Southend Pier.

“Big Ern”, the man formerly known as Mr G is sheer genius – he has learnt something over the years after all, he knows exactly how to raise my blood pressure!

He’ll be back at 7.30 tomorrow morning with more bacon. The nurses are delighted and busy inspecting the ingredients on my prized bottle of HP. Blood pressure’s over 100 now!

Magic stuff.

Big Ern and the beneficial properties of HP sauce is a post from: Anna Raccoon

I wrote this last night.

It was intended as an e-mail to a good friend, but dork that I am, I don’t have my e-mail password with me…. I have my computer, but no wi-fi connection.

Today I have discovered a computer I can have access to for a few minutes, so whether you like it or not (I’m still in a bolshie mood!)  it’s going up on the blog.

Because it’s my blog.

Because I’ve just walked down three flights of stairs carrying my intravenous trolley and my laptop, because I’ve got to get back up those stairs again.

Because its pissing with rain and blowing a hooley in Bordeaux.

Because it’s the other side of this huge site.

Because I can.

Because doing so is Anna’s challenge for the day and it’s good for my spirit!

If you don’t like it, or think it’s not what you expect to read on a political blog – stuff you, read elsewhere, or forgive me my self-indulgence – it’s done me the world of good achieving the noble art of pressing ‘publish’.

I ain’t quit yet!

I had thought I had seen off all the surgical horrors; all that remained was the chemotherapy. A few minor details to attend to before I presented myself back at Bordeaux.

An ‘Echographie‘ – got that one, that’s just the man with the slimey, slithery stethoscope, now’t to worry about there.

Another ‘analyse‘ – I have a loyalty card for the local blood vampire now, know the routine backwards.

A ‘bon de transport‘ – payment for the taxi service, to be collected from our friendly local doctor; Comprende la Francaise is a doddle really if you listen carefully.

Oh, and a ‘petit intervention‘, the Doctor patted her shoulder in a cheerful manner. I looked puzzled. ‘For the injection’ she proudly said in English.

Ahh, got you ma’am, had one of those before, after the operation, just a big needle really, yeah OK, put me down for one of those too.

I saw the local surgeon, for the ‘petit intervention’.

“Locale ou generale pour le petit intervention?”, he asked, flashing me a winning smile.

Well, Good God, I’m English!  Me heap big tough nut OK?

Me Anna Raccoon.

Me got house full of interesting guests to go home to.

‘Locale of course’, I said nonchalantly, it’s only a big needle.

“Donc, 10.00am Mercredi“

This French lark is a doddle, I tell you.

Pride before the fall, et al.

Tuesday they rang me again;

babble babble,

(fast French is a lot harder to understand on the phone!)

babble, babble, changez, rendezvous,

oui, oui, got that, sept heure et demi, yep got that, 7.30 not 10.00, douche dans le soir

(gosh it’s amazing how much French I understand now)

yep, slap that disgusting stuff all over my hair the night before, and see you at 7.30, a bientot, I even sound as though I understand perfectly these days.

Arrive at local hospital on dot of 7.30am. Vouz-avez le douche dernier soir?

Oui Madame. Et encore ce matin … er non …

Panic stations; willing hands propelled me towards the douche, pulling my clothes off my back as we went. Only a few yards, but the colleague already had the water running as we entered and blasted me from head to foot, no time to wait for dim witted English woman to shower in peace.

Covered in disgusting stuff once more, hair and all, and rinsed off … ‘her with the bureaucracy’  was shouting out questions to me from the doorway.

Towel, paper bag over wet hair, on trolley, moving fast – exactly nine minutes after I arrived I was wheeled into theatre … worthy of a formula one pit stop.

Er, I think I was supposed to arrive in time to be prepared for 7.30am … these little details go missing in the translation sometimes! And now we come to mention it, what was I doing in the operating theatre? I’m only here for a little injection; a ‘petit intervention‘ aren’t I?

No one to ask!  Strange places, operating theatres. Very workmanlike. Functional. No mystery to the people who work there, they see it all every day, but riveting to the rare patient who arrives fully conscious.

For a start no one meets your eye, they are simply not used to patients being conscious.

Patients are slabs of meat who arrive on trolleys, they don’t speak, and you don’t speak to them.

I’m not complaining, but it’s a weird atmosphere after the excellent care on the wards.

Trolleys bearing other comatose persons are parked next to you in the narrow hallway. You look into their eyes, they say nothing … they said ‘generale’ when asked.

Hands snatch the cloth from underneath you and lift you into the air – no one says ‘we’re about to move you to another trolley, one so narrow you will spend most of your time wondering if you will hurt yourself when you fall off’ – they just pick you up, dump you on another trolley, and off you go again. ..further into the surgeons lair.

You arrive under a light some four feet across.

Ye God’s! I’m in the operating theatre! How big is this needle?

Workmanlike hands support you as they roll you to the left … guess they must be pulling that cloth from under me … but no, as they roll you to the right, you realise – too late – they have skilfully wrapped your arms in the cloth and used your own body weight to make sure you can’t escape.

Not happy about this at all. Where’s that nice surgeon with the winning smile? Nowhere to be seen, that’s where.

Now trapped in a mummified cocoon, a man approaches with what appears to be blood dripping off a foot long pair of forceps.

I think he’s a man, I can only see his eyes between the mask and the hat.

I’m sure about the blood red liquid though, it’s dripping down my neck and my face…..and I can’t wipe it away, my arms are trapped.

He pulls away the paltry covering that is the paper party dress I am wearing for the occasion, and exposes one breast – and proceeds to paint that too.

You’re wondering why I didn’t say something, aren’t you?

Lots of reasons really: stunned shock for one thing, an old fashioned convention that you meet someone’s eyes before speaking, and no one, but no one had looked at me … and a definite absence of useful  French phrases for the occasion.

I couldn’t even manage ‘I’m only here for an injection‘ by this time!

Meanwhile, more deft hands were attaching wires to my legs, my arms, my back, my front … my heart beat was pinging away like a good’un on a monitor.

‘Paddles’ were laid out beside me (I’ve seen Emergency Ward 10! I know what they are – how big is this effing needle?)

No one spoke – not to me anyway, they chatted amongst themselves, the menu for Sunday lunch, the new rota – normal working life conversation. All in French, naturally.

As they chatted, I watched with interest a huge green paper cloth being unfolded. Gummed down one side, it was fastened to the side of my chest, down over my body, and secured underneath the trolley.  Probably some health and safety requirement for the surgeon.

Another one unfurled, and the process was repeated on the other side. Probably for the theatre nurse I thought.

Yet another one appeared and was glued down at right angles, covering the rest of my body. Blimey, they’re thorough, I thought!

Then ‘Me heap big tough nut’ heard the unmistakable sound of yet another paper cloth being snapped open.

Over my head it came; snap, snap, snap – and that was me vanished forever, locked in a vast green paper sack and I never saw it coming.

I was but a six inch square of bright red exposed flesh; I had no arms, no legs, no voice.

‘Get it off, get it off‘, I cried, but no one answered. I had, apparently ,volunteered for a non-speaking role in a French horror movie.

‘I’m only here for the injection‘, I said. But they knew better.

They were French. They knew what a ‘petit intervention’ was.

I felt a cloth rolled out across my stomach.

Sensed instruments laid on it – cheeky blighters I thought, this isn’t one of your common or garden unconscious patients you can treat as a workbench.  Tried to wriggle to dislodge the cloth and prove I was still wide – very wide! – awake in my paper bag.

Zilch, they’d done a good job on me. I couldn’t move an inch. 15, 18, 20 – I counted the instruments as they were laid out – how many did he need for one poxy injection? I was getting seriously concerned now. Anyone in my head know the French for I’m still bloody conscious here? No? Nobody did.

Do you know those trolleys are so narrow you can tell whether it’s a man or a woman leaning over you? Bet you didn’t know that.

You’ve probably had the good sense never to put yourself in danger of finding out.  God knows what he found so exciting. Th’robin’red breast? These little things occupy the mind as unbridled panic gives way to galloping hysteria.

A muffled voice came from the corner. ‘C’est une catastrophe, non, non, non‘.

I don’t know about you, but catastrophe to me means ‘we just injected the patient with elephant anaesthetic‘ or something similar, (and I left the antidote in my other jeans).

Maybe the Japanese nuclear disaster would qualify, but definitely of that order.

At the same time the heart machine started pinging wildly. (No surprise there!) A hand reached under the cloth and yanked my head violently to the left; no ‘by your leave’, nowt.

It held it there as another hand grabbed my hand and pulled it firmly downwards, muttering the fatal words …

‘Detache le bras.‘

Pure unadulterated, unfiltered fear distorted my face; a tide of crimson rode up past my neck until it enveloped my ears, my eyes, and my forehead.

I had never allowed myself pure fear before.

A streak of self preservation had always filtered it as being too destructive, too navel gazing, too self indulgent.

This latest comment had over ridden all the self imposed security devices, run roughshod over years of being unemotional in public, torn a path through buried angst, and emerged with bared talons dripping with venom, ready to cut a swathe of revenge through every last person in that room.

‘I’m not here to have my effing arm taken off, let me out’ … I yelled from inside the paper bag.

They didn’t understand of course. French weren’t they?

But then a new voice entered the room, I recognised it. It belonged to the winning smile that had seduced me into this charade. Miraculously it seemed to have mastered English since our last meeting!

‘Good Morning Ms Raccoon, This is your surgeon, I can see you are stressed, I am going to give you a locale anaesthetic now, just try to relax.’

Possibly the best words in the English language.

What followed was a two hour operation to implant what seems to be a ping pong ball in my chest. It really didn’t hurt at all, but I understand now why they pinned my arms to my sides – every time he poked around inside me and nicked a nerve, my arm made an involuntary attempt to ruin his chances of fatherhood for all time.

Methinks they’ve done this before.

Everyone at Bordeaux likes my ping pong ball very much, they’ve got three bags of God knows what hooked into it already, and they’re queuing up for a go with it – who needs to find a vein? Just stab the ping pong ball.

Just remember, a ‘petit intervention‘ is not French for a bigger injection than the other 70 you’ve already had, it’s quite literally a different ‘ball’ game, no matter how nicely they smile.

The correct response is ‘generale, definiment‘ – loud and clear!

Still, an hour later I was sitting on a sunlit terrace enjoying an excellent five course lunch with the inimitable Ms Smudd and Smuddlett, so it wasn’t all bad.

The operation has definitely surpassed the time I went white water rafting in Nepal to celebrate my 50th birthday – I’d always quoted that as the ultimate nightmare. Now in second place. Come to think of it, that was me playing little ms tough nut that got me into that scrape.

Just a quick recap of other excellent English words.

On arriving at Bordeaux, I met the ‘Oncologist’ – she spoke a little English she said. That turned out to amount to:

‘I have a lot of questions to ask you.’

‘Hmmn, OK.’

‘Do you smoke?’

‘Oui’ … (here we go!)

‘Ow many chaque jour‘ … (are we coming to the end of the English? Maybe the lecture in French is not so bad!)

‘Hmmmn, 20 or so’ … (takes deep breath and braces self)

‘Would you rather sit in zee petit jardin so you can haff a zigarette while I demand the questions…?’

-and with that she poured out two coffees and carried them to a seat in the garden and smiled benevolently as I lit up!

Wowee! These people are human!

Post photo credit: Fresh air and Fresh Food.

French With Tears is a post from: Anna Raccoon

We’ve heard from the Boss again.

Anna has been back in hospital for a couple of days for a follow-up, and should be back home early next week.

Anna’s tumour taken out a couple of weeks ago has been analysed in Paris, and they are as sure as they can be that they extracted all of it. The tumour was a secondary, which had developed around a primary tumour.

The primary is thought to be a little bit of tissue left behind from an old (very old) operation.

If anyone has Anna’s mobile, calls will be welcome this weekend.

[Update: Sunday 9am - they've sent her home again. So good news, and we may hear more later or tomorrow].

Photo Credit: Montclair Vet Hospital.

Anna Raccoon latest news (Updated) is a post from: Anna Raccoon

“Breaking speculation” interrupted the, er, “breaking speculation” as to who or what might be responsible for the tragic deaths in Norway. The media had moved on.  No longer were they lovingly arranging pictures of 92 clean living but dead Norwegians, they had more exciting pictures to broadcast.

“Amy Winehouse found dead!” Gosh, now there’s a Google keyword to conjure with, towing a whole host of other keywords, heroin addiction, drink fuelled orgies, the dangers of cigarette smoking, tattoos, devoted ex-husbands performing their marital duty from a prison cell, (along with his new ‘squeeze’ sitting in the marital home nursing new baby, helpfully throwing in her ten pennorth), quick name check on the present on-off shag moping disconsolately outside the million pound house that being a tattooed, heavy smoking, drug taking, drunk with an incredible voice, wrought husky by emphysema, can bring you.

She had caught the media on the hop too, they had settled in for a long wallow in the frothy waters of ‘despicable’ racial hatred, terrorism, and the Al Qaeda recruiting programme. With a short order of English Defence League on the side.

They reacted fast, despatching a lone blonde to stand outside the house and try to whip up a sense of excitement around the half dozen people who had stopped to see what the police were up to.

They looped the film continuously; it took half an hour before they had drummed up enough business to call it a ‘gathering crowd’. Meanwhile, clutching at straws, they had Michelle ‘I only actually met her twice’ Gayle on the line to offer her speculation as to how she had died, when she had died, who she had been with, whether her parents had been informed – ‘I’ve spoken to someone who knows someone who they think may have told her Father’…only three points removed? The researchers must have been thrilled with that one.

Those who had been thrilled by her verbal warbling that she wouldn’t go to Rehab, No, no, no, and who had been waiting patiently for her to recreate that album, turned up bearing gifts of more fags – keep stoking that emphysema laden voice – more booze, and probably ‘worth sorting through the teddy bears for more class ‘A’ drugs’, presumably to reassure their heroine that she needn’t give up the Heroin in heaven either. No, no, no!

Within an hour they had managed to throw in the keyword names of half a dozen other drug addled young people who had died at the same age, interspersed with an occasional foray to inspect the bloody wounds inflicted by the Norwegian mass murderer.

The remote control was the other side of the room from me, Mr G down the garden; I couldn’t avoid this depressing diet of the end of the world as we knew it.

Then the phone rang – an old, old friend, and long time commentator. Saul. We are of the same vintage, as are many commentators on this site; the ‘baby boomers’. The post war children. We discussed the present news, the ‘worst of times’ as it were. Then we started making a list of the ‘best of times’.

It is true; we have had the best of times. We were born into the infant NHS, coddled and cosseted, fed our Cod Liver Oil and School milk, encouraged to be bonny babies; went to Sunday school when that was still the norm, played out in the street without fear, allowed to be children. We walked alone to schools sometimes miles away, to find teachers who were dedicated to the task of filling our heads with knowledge, we returned to Mothers (one or two exceptions here!) who strove to fill our bellies with nourishing food.

We grew up to be the first teenagers, to taste independence in the heady days of hot pants and the Beatles warbling ‘I want to hold your hand’ – such innocence.

By the time we were ‘of age’ the pill had been invented, we enjoyed the early days of ‘free love’ without the dangers that now lurk.

We came of age to find ourselves in Universities, new careers open to women; mortgages offered to all who could save the deposit, regardless of gender. Our elders could only look on with envy. Most of us have ridden the housing boom with ease; some of us still have ‘final salary’ pensions.

We truly have been an extraordinarily lucky generation, probably the most blessed that has ever existed – and it behoves us sometimes to reflect on that as we look on with horror at the world in which the young must grow up today.

Now that the media have taken on the mantle of bearers of speculation and idle gossip, perhaps the blogs, who have always been true purveyors of facts as far as I was concerned, will leave them to it.

So, in that vein, feel free to add to the list of factual good fortune that we have enjoyed in the comments, and let’s turn the sound down on that endless, depressing, speculation.

“The best of times, the worst of times…” is a post from: Anna Raccoon

We’ve heard from the Boss, by phone, secondhand (thank-you, Mr G).

[Update: You can read the background here.]

The news is that Anna has had her Op, and Didn’t She Do Well Brucie, she may be out in a small number of weeks after another scan to make sure that the cyst is completely removed, and for post-op treatment.

Apparently the Doctors in France, or at least in the Bordeaux mega-Hospital, seem are very young.

We have not received a review of the hospital food, though the word is that the current tipple of choice is Morphine, not neat Bourbon.

SBML has a phone number for Anna’s mobile; anyone who knows Anna well enough to call for a chat can ask him directly.

French Letter is a post from: Anna Raccoon

I’ve got the hang of the local accent now; I rattle confidently through the questions with them as they laboriously write out the answers in triplicate. Nom, prénom flies out in the correct back to front order; I deliver my telephone number in batches of two digits at a time, no longer do they turn into ducks barking ‘quoi, quoi, quoi’ at me.

Then comes the dreaded ‘livret de famille?’

‘Non, Madame!’

Only this time we are computerised, this time it is not just the look of horrified bewilderment, the search for comforting colleagues that can deal with this unbelievable situation.

This time it’s the blue screen of death, M. Le Chef sent for, and the bureau grinds to a halt.

You might as well apply for a mortgage in the UK and tell them you are unemployed and of no fixed abode as tell a French medical computer that you do not have a ‘livret de famille’ – it simply won’t progress to the next page of questions without the number of your all important record of birth commune, various marriages, how many children you have.

The computer is tempted with the response ‘Anglaise’. No dice. It is probably surreptitiously tempted with ‘bloody stupid foreigner’ for all I know. It’s not playing.

I produce the photocopies of birth certificates, marriage certificates, utility bill etc, which I habitually have about my person – I have been through this scenario many times before, as you can tell. Even my all important ‘carte de rendezvous’ showing that I will have surgery on Thursday – this blood test is important.

The computer is unmoved. I might have Mad Cow disease! (Pipe down in the Snug, please, I’m speaking)

M. Le Chef has an idea; he once had this problem a long time ago. Could he please have my ‘Carte de Groupe Sanguin’. ‘Non, Monsieur, je n’ai pas’….. The blue screen of death apparently spreads from the computer across the face of all present. ‘Quoi? Quoi? Quoi? Three ducks in a row. Pole-axed, dumbfounded, agape, aghast, thunderstruck!

M Le Docteur in charge of all vampire duties is extracted from his surgery. He speaks English. He explains the documents I am carrying from the anaesthetist. Here, see? The anaesthetist wants to order 4 litres of blood in preparation, it is not just a matter of checking me for that well known English ailment of Mad Cow disease, but it is the responsibility of the laboratory to check my documents and tell him what blood group to order. There! Look! He requests the details by fax three days before he will let the surgeon loose on me – it is his responsibility…

I should have a card that tells them that exhaustive checks have been made that I am who I say I am, born in the commune that can vouch for me, to the parents that were known by the Mairie, he cannot believe that I go through life – did I travel there by car? – and do not have on my person a card telling them my fully documented blood group…oh damned consternation. These ignorant foreigners!

There is nothing else for it, I must be treated as though I had just been born in the glorious French Republic – they would create a Carte de Groupe Sanguin for me, the computer could be mollified.

This is such a serious matter that two sets of papers must be prepared. Hand written since the computer still isn’t playing ball.

I am marched into the first Doctor. He recognises me (as well he might, I am still smarting from our last encounter). He knows I must be on their computer – it seems in handwriting the documents, they have spelt my first name in the French fashion, and thus it doesn’t match up with my dossier. He rushes out and everything is painfully rewritten. Now he can ask my name once more, and I can produce my passport to verify my identity, and my date of birth, and, and, and – finally he extracts an inch of blood and sends me back to the waiting room.

Five minutes later, another Doctor calls me – and we go through the charade of checking that I am still the same person I was five minutes ago, and ten minutes ago, and even fifteen minutes ago. He extracts another inch of blood.

This personal responsibility business takes some getting used to.

You see, it is my body, my responsibility to ensure that I get the right blood, that I am free of dastardly English diseases, and the Carte de Groupe Sanguine will prove all that. So they do it twice over, with two different Doctors, (to make sure I haven’t bribed the first one?)…..I could have chosen the laboratory that I trusted with this all important task too. There are three or four in every main town.

I was amused in hospital when it was decided to send me off for a second opinion by ambulance to be asked ‘which ambulance?’ When I answered with a shrug – ‘they all look the same to me’, the Doctor returned with a handful of brochures from the different ambulance companies…..I picked the one with the square headlights of course, how else could I make a decision?

But it is my body they are conveying, perhaps I have heard rumours that one company drives too fast, or maybe my cousin works for another company? Choices, choices, unheard of with the NHS.

I had thought that my appointment with the anaesthetist, quite distinct from my appointment with the surgeon, was to allow him to check that I was fit enough for him to risk his reputation on – not at all, now I learn that it was for me to also decide whether his eyes were too close together, did I trust him? – I could have turned him down and requested another!

Now I understand why as I waited to be called by him, earlier names called involved entire families standing up and marching into his room – a big decision, grandma, mama, papa, and the maiden aunt all wanted to size him up and help decide whether they were prepared to entrust their precious relative to him!

Choices, decisions to be made, personal responsibility, scary stuff. It works though.

It’s all very foreign to someone brought up with the NHS.

Blood Sucking Bureaucracy is a post from: Anna Raccoon

As a Quaker, I have mixed feelings about a man being forced to kill another man. It may be true that because I have mixed feeling about being forced to kill another human being, that I am a Quaker. Chicken and Egg.

Michael was jailed for seven months on Tuesday because, having served in the Navy for 6 years as a medical assistant on submarines, he refused rifle training when he was to be deployed to Afghanistan.

Whilst I wholeheartedly support the right to be a conscientious objector, I freely admit that my first reaction on reading the Guardian article was ‘shouldn’t have joined the bluddy Navy then, should you Pal?’ I was totally unsympathetic towards his predicament.

It seemed morally questionable to have accepted the secure employment, the training, the benefits of being service personnel for six years and then only reveal your moral objections to military action on the eve of deployment to active duty. (Though if anybody could outline the military tactics behind deploying a submariner in the middle of the Kabul desert to me, I would be grateful!)

Michael hadn’t refused active service on religious grounds; he is an atheist, so his objection was on political not moral grounds. He had read the Wikileaks reports and believed that he would be barred from treating Afghan civilians.

War is possibly an even more emotive debating ground than religion.

There is a majority opinion in most countries that boys must grow to be ‘men’, must fight to preserve their borders and protect their women and children. ‘Where would we be’, the argument runs, ‘if everybody squealed – ooh, I couldn’t kill anybody, not I’.

It is usually presented in those terms; ‘they squealed’, they displayed ‘girlish tendencies’, they are not ‘real men’.

My own Father, a Seventh Day Adventist, (don’t ask, I have no idea!) solved this conundrum during the last war by signing up early and becoming one of the youngest Captains – in Bomb Disposals. It ruined his mental health, but allowed him to believe that he was solely saving life, not taking it. He could, as a member of the Seventh Day Adventists, have legitimately claimed Contentious Objector status, the law allows for that. Curiously, most Seventh Day Adventists who did claim conscientious objector status, were subsequently deployed into bomb disposals – perhaps dear Papa gave them the idea. The Militia Ballot Act of 1757 was passed specifically to allow Quakers to be excluded from military service and it has since been extended to include other faiths.

That was a war time situation though, all hands on deck etc. What of Michael’s situation – quietly coasting along in the Navy, deployed under the seas, trained in the arts of manhandling a stretcher through narrow bulkheads, and suddenly presented with an SA80 rifle and told to practise killing people that he didn’t believe should be killed?

Do any of us have the right to force a man to kill another man? Do the arguments of the ‘greater good’ overcome the damage done to an individual forced to take such an action – not in the heat of the moment, to protect those nearest and dearest to him, something that I would do myself if the occasion arose – but coldly, cynically, ‘train your rifle on that person and kill him, our political betters have decreed that you do so’.

The Judge Advocate, Alistair McGrigor, told Michael, ‘Members of the armed forces cannot pick and choose which orders they want to carry out’. Fair enough, an army is all about discipline. Should that discipline extend to forcing a man to carry out an action which he feels will damage his mental health due to its moral repugnance to him?

International Law is surprisingly partly on Michael’s side.  The United Nations Commission on Human Rights resolution 1998/77 officially recognized that ‘persons [already] performing military service may develop conscientious objections.’ The US Supreme Court has effectively ruled that, whilst you may ‘develop’ a conscientious objection, it cannot be selective. You must object to all military service, not just be country specific.

Had Michael developed a desire to join a particular religious group, he would not be facing this prison sentence; it seems that, as an atheist, he is excluded from all the exemptions he might have sought refuge in. Moral objections are only for the established church members it seems. Do atheists not have morals?

Does that seem reasonable to you? Do you think he should have been marched at gun point and ordered to disembowel the nearest Afghani? I can’t help feeling that given the limited use a reluctant submariner combatant would have been in the Kabul desert, the Navy could have found another way of dealing with Michael Lyons.

Michael Lyons. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

I have always been fascinated by how the law, invariably shaped to deal with the ‘hard cases’ that make the headlines and force change, pans out to affect the ordinary, the mundane, the banal, that vast chunk of the population that must abide by them and shape their everyday responses to accord with them.

Politicians make the law to please those who shout loudest, those whose votes are assured, but they affect everyone. I have had the opportunity over the past week to study the effect on ordinary men and women in a different country – it’s been the best part of the week.

Whilst the French revolution theoretically forged a republic that was colour blind and gender blind, women didn’t achieve the vote until 1944. Feminists are fond of claiming that there is insufficient equality for women in France.

Over this last week I have been intrigued to see that perhaps the men have more ‘equality’. In a hospital, there is absolutely no difference between male and female Doctors and nurses such as we see in Britain.

There is none of the charade that is played out in Britain whereby a female nurse stands guard beside a male Doctor as he carries out an ‘intimate’ examination, in case the ‘nasty man’ does something inappropriate, and is overtaken by lust at the sight of a middle aged female body. No door left open to the surgery so that the receptionist is able to hear your pathetic cries for help! Mammograms are routinely carried out by men, bed pans as liable to be delivered by male or female nurses – it comes as a shock to the English, subconsciously inured to believe that they are not safe in such situations without a female guard!

On the other hand, your privacy is respected in ways which are equally astounding to the English, brought up to believe that they have no rights once in a hospital situation – ‘matron’ holds all the rights.

An Englishman’s home is supposed to be his castle, but a French home truly is; you know you have finally been accepted here when you are invited inside a French home – they have no wish to show their home off to all and sundry. Many French people refuse to allow photographs of the inside of their home to be displayed by estate agents, and sometimes not even the price. Privacy laws are draconian.

No one, but no one, from the cleaners to the head honcho, would dream of just walking into your room, your temporary home. They knock and wait for you to respond – er, unless you are stupid enough to respond ‘j’arrive’ (which is the normal response to a knock on your door) when you are wired up to the national grid – they forget their manners and come bowling in mob handed shouting Non, Non, Non, Madame…..! The correct response in this situation is an imperious ‘entrée’. None of that business of nurses poking their heads unannounced through the curtains around your bed!

There aren’t any curtains for a start, not one in the entire hospital. Everything is glass or metal, designed to be operated with the minimum of touch, and wipe clean – which it is, forensically, twice a day, by a battalion of 6 cheerful young people, clustered round a trolley which contains all the necessary equipment and germ killers – and lists which they must all sign detailing what is to be done to every nook and cranny. They never cut corners.

There are no wards, all are two bedded rooms – although you can have a single room if you prefer. There is no privacy from your companion, nor for her from you. The French are notoriously interested in health and illness. Once the Doctor has asked your permission to pull back the bed clothes and see how you are cooking – coming to the boil nicely M. Le Docteur – your companion will be craning her neck avidly to see what ails you – and what shape you are in, a matter she feels free to discuss with you later.

She will be as interested as the Docteur as to whether the appalling food has managed to set your insides like concrete yet or not – more on that later.

French children are brought up to kiss every adult on both cheeks if the adult is known to the parents. They embrace freely, a habit they continue in adulthood. The insistence on equality means that this applies to everyone you know – the dustman, the plumber and your Aunt Mathilda. They are used to touching each other physically – the English aren’t.

They are taught from childhood the art of conversing with each other, not grunting an acknowledgement. They gossip constantly. A lifetime’s habit.

They embrace the idea of ‘commune’ willingly – whoever lives within your ‘commune’, however temporary, is part of your family.

Thus the good looking male nurse that delivers your bed pan, will give you a friendly pat of encouragement on the foot as he waits patiently for you to perform, (naked, since he has pulled back the bed clothes to help you sit up) the passing nurse with a few minutes to spare will call in to discuss with him the jazz concert last Saturday night, your companion will offer words of encouragement from her bed, the nurse will take a mobile phone call from her boyfriend, another nurse will knock on the door to ask if she might stick the vibrator thingy in your ear again, it is after all a mere two hours since she last did that, your companion will enquire for the fifth time ‘sa marche bien?’….

And your average Englishwoman will ponder that it is not the food which glues your insides together, but the cultural shock – and wonder whether it might be necessary to return to England for a few days of the time honoured solitary contemplation with a good book.

We never used to be so prudish – our home in Hereford had a wonderful ‘Ty Bach’ in the garden, specially built to accommodate husband and wife side by side, with a glorious view of the morning sunrise down the valley – carefully positioned over a 10’ drop into the midden!

Would anyone care to speculate on the forces which has left even those English who adore France, feeling so paralysed by embarrassment when surrounded by such lovely caring people?

Life in the goldfish bowl. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

This nightmare that I had
woke up in the hospital suite
And thought “my, this is worse than bad”
just where on earth did I meet
That chick with whom I share this room?
Champagne’s inappropriate
right now and so are those balloons
got no cause to celebrate.

I was determined that I wouldn’t turn this blog into a ‘how I fought the cancer and won’ victim saga – but Daz’s comment late last night was so ‘orribly appropriate that I thought surely someone must have told him?

I have had the week from Hell, since last we spoke.

Everyone has moved heaven and earth to get me into the Institute Bergonie in double quick time, and less than six days after I was diagnosed; I had an appointment with the surgeon.

First I had to have a scan, pretty pictures for the butcher. No problem, don’t like it, had one before, claustrophobic and all that, but we’re a big girl now, we can handle it, and we did.

Next day, set off for Bordeaux to see the surgeon clutching my pretty pictures. I seemed to be awfully hot, but it was 40 degrees here, so to be expected. Passed his finger tip examination with flying colours, everything in tip top order – ye God’s they are thorough!

Saturday I just got hotter and hotter; by the evening Mr G was fielding bowls of iced water and flannels to cool me down. By the morning, Mr G was panicking (so I thought!) not only was I red hot, I was covered in beetroot coloured blotches that were fast joining up. He bundled me into the terribly chic, paper thin, silk pyjamas he had just bought me, with a skimpy, oh so sexy, camisole top, and drove me straight to A & E. I was too bloody hot to put up any serious resistance.

Crack of dawn on a Sunday, A & E is deserted – I saw a nurse within minutes – and suddenly all Hell broke loose. I was on a trolley racing down a corridor and an army of little people (I know the Aquitainoise are a short race, but you obviously don’t get through medical school if you are over 5’4”!) were swarming all over me.  Two on my left hand side sticking needles in me, more on my right hand side wiring me up to the national grid which was travelling at roughly the same speed along side me, and more at my head barking gonflé, soufflé at me just in case after 63 years of remembering to breathe in and out all by myself, even when I’m asleep, I had suddenly had a lapse of memory. She punched me in the chest to get the message through to the English giantesse. Gee, thanks, I feel heaps better now.

It seems I might look like a human being to the untrained eye, but injecting a Raccoon with radioactive isotopes doesn’t agree with them. Roughly the same effect as sticking them in a microwave on full power for too long. They cook from the inside out.

Thus I spent the last few days roped down on all sides like Gulliver amongst the Lilliputians, wondering where I met the 84 year old ‘chick’ with whom I shared a room….thanks Daz!

By Tuesday I had turned an ecclesiastical purple that Mr G assured me went perfectly with the turquoise and purple colour scheme of that room.  I was unhooked from the national grid, and given a special travelling pack round my neck of ‘whatever it was’ I was mainlining – I was being transferred by ambulance to see a specialist. I hadn’t had a fag or a cup of tea in days. Climbing the turquoise walls as you can imagine, and itching like a dog with fleas.

The specialist carefully inspected me, slathered me in some ghastly smelly unguent, and replaced the only clothing I had – yeah! Mr G’s ravishing negligee set, which promptly stuck to me at every point, a bit late to join the wet- t-shirt competition, but there you go.

Ambulances here treat you like prisoners; you are signed in and out of everywhere you go, and to my surprise, when I emerged from the consulting room, my guard had vanished on an ‘urgence’ and I was to wait in the waiting room.

Well, you know what it’s like when you are let off the leash for ten minutes and haven’t had a fag for three days? Your mind is working overtime. It is if you are a true nicotine addict. I am that woman.

I knew where I was, centre of Bergerac, it couldn’t be more than 60 paces to the High Street, sharp right turn, another 20 paces to the Tabac. I could do it, course I could. So off I went, slipped past Madame la Receptioniste when her back was turned, stomp, stomp, stomp, corner, right wheel, past goggle eyed café customers, stomp, stomp, stomp, made it!

M. le Tabac, to his credit, took it in his stride and sold me a pack of Fine vert and a lighter with a dead straight face, and I stomped off back to the Clinique Pasteur.

Sat on the window sill – and oh, that ‘Hamlet’ moment. Wonderful, my brain went back to normal.

No longer deprived of nicotine, it looked about itself. Took in the full effect of the ecclesiastical purple and beetroot red from head to foot, the fluorescent pink unguent, the skimpy and clinging silk camisole, the travelling pack of intravenous God knows what stuck in my arm, the lack of hairbrush or mirror for three days, and especially the elderly pair of slippers…and wondered at the French savoir-faire. They hadn’t stared, well, not that I noticed; if they did, it would only be because I am a giant in Lilliput land. Surely?

Yesterday the ambulance took me to Bordeaux to see the surgeon there, still in my fetching garb, très chic – Mr G, unimpressed by my escapade the previous afternoon had declined to bring me any more clothes, rotter! – and sadly they have cancelled the operation for next week. It seems there is less danger from my unwanted ‘squatter’ than there is from operating whilst I am like this. I have to wait another couple of weeks – so the ambulance dumped me back into Mr Gs care and control late last night.

Glad to be home – my new nurse, Mr G, knows better than to deprive an angry Raccoon of nicotine, he serves up mugs full of steaming hot builders tea every hour, and having him turn me into a human fly trap with the pongy unguent is actually quite enjoyable. He’s even let me sit in front of my computer to see what you’ve all been up to.

I don’t know which I welcome more, the tea or the nicotine. Whoever told me that French cuisine extended to hospital food was a bluddy f***ing liar.  A plague on all their houses. It is terrible, worse than terrible, bluddy ‘orrible. Disgusting.

Once they had decided that I could be trusted to breath on my own, the nurse (and they are all wonderful, superb) asked if I wanted anything? ‘Une tasse de thé‘, said I, ever the innocent. ‘Thé Anglaise‘, she said?  Boy, that sounded good. I’m too gullible.

It arrived. A glass bowl with no handle. A thin brown liquid in the bottom, no milk, no sugar, an oily scum on the surface on which floated a label on the tea bag … ‘Madame Butterfly’s English Breakfast Tea’……

Dear Madame Butterfly,

You haven’t a pigging clue what a cup of tea should look like. Or taste like. Or be served in. Not a pigging clue.

Regards,

Ms Raccoon.

Mr G, alerted to my distress, brought some Yorkshire T-bags in for me. Sadly, the only time you get the chance to use them is breakfast, served three hours after they wake you by sticking a vibrator thingy in your ear when you’ve finally got to sleep (my neighbour snores like a hibernating bear) and if you’re smart, and Raccoons are smart, you can request the glass bowl be filled with lukewarm water and ‘un peu de lait’.  A Yorkshire tea-bag, floated in this concoction, and bashed over the head several times with the blunt end of your Biro can be coaxed into something resembling a cup of tea. It’s the only tea-bag man enough for the task.

I’ve come home to discover that Yorkshire Tea are running an advert proudly demonstrating their converted ice-cream van ‘Lil Urn’ – running round America, for God’s sake. Americans don’t need tea, they don’t understand it. Raccoons do.

So please, just for me, petition Yorkshire Tea, threaten them with the wrath of the Raccoon, whatever it takes – but make sure ‘Little Urn’ is stationed outside the Institute Bergonie by the time I am incarcerated again. Tell them to honk when they arrive – I will get to them, even if I have to trail the entire bloody hospital behind me.

In the meantime, have a look down the back of your sofa, search the back of your cupboards, and donate any spare Yorkshire Tea-bags to Ms Raccoon, care of Madame Nundy, Issigeac, 24560, France.

I might just survive with your help.

Ps. The fags are no problem. The biggest cancer hospital in France thoughtfully provides a beautiful water garden full of flowers, shielded from the sun and the rain, right in the centre; knee deep in cigarette ends, despite the ashtrays, packed out with stick thin, bald headed patients, nurses and ambulance staff all happily smoking their heads off. I know, because my ambulance crew introduced me to it yesterday, they wanted a fag too before the long journey back to Issigeac. So very French.

Dordogne Angst Unlimited. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Hello my darlings – I haven’t half missed you all!

Rural France excels at things like growing lettuces, keeping families together, fostering community spirit; by heck, it struggles when asked to integrate with the modern high tech world.

I have moved house over the past week, only a matter of around 100 yards, but it requires engaging with French bureaucracy on about 74 different levels. 73 of them failed totally.

Hence I have had no internet for the past week (apologies to those of you who have e-mailed me) one of my neighbours has lost his phone number for ever, I will have a new e-mail address by the end of the week.  Although this house has been in the same road for the past two hundred years, the Mairie have yet to get around to giving it an address which is creating all sorts of problems, and the only internet I have is precarious via wi-fi from outside another neighbours house. If it’s raining, I shan’t be posting!

Amidst all the chaos, it’s my birthday; another year older, another minuscule pension comes on stream – so I thought I’d blow it all on you…..

Drinks are on the house tonight, doubles all round. No bar staff, you’ll just have to serve yourself – Sad and Matt deserve a night off they’ve done sterling work over the past week.

If you can find the Pork Scratchings, help yourself, just check the sell by date, some of them were ordered in this time last year……

Party Time! is a post from: Anna Raccoon

You can’t be late today.

Get Your Skates on Girl! is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Jumps Over the Lazy Dog” – the pangram that we all knew by heart once upon a time. Those of us engaged in the process of mechanically transcribing the spoken word, that is. It was drummed into us as we sat in front of ageing – even then – Remington typewriters whose keyboards were hidden from us by a rough wooden board.

Fingers punching up and down, we learnt the placement of the 26 letters represented in that phrase by heart.

To this day I cannot type fast on a laptop keyboard. A laptop demands a lighter touch, fingers held away from nearby keys, no space for a manicured nail to drop down between the letters. It is an entirely different technique.

Give me an old fashioned keyboard, and my fingers fly, in light or darkness, it makes no difference to me – for I never look at the keys. While researching this post I found a ‘typing test’ – try it – I still hit 59 word-units a minute. Now try doing that by looking at your keyboard. You waste too much time looking from text to keyboard and back again. It can’t be done.

Amazing isn’t it, that in an age when speed and efficiency are everything, we have abandoned such a simple technique to speed? Not only abandoned the technique, but the means by which we once achieved it.  Godrej and Boyce closed the doors of their factory today. You’ve possibly never heard of them. They were the world’s last manufacturer of the old fashioned eco-friendly, upright typewriter. The machine with the perfect carbon-ribbon footprint. No electricity required.

In recent years their output has been confined to the Indian government – departments that demanded a typing test on an old fashioned ‘upright’ before they would let you near their computers.

After the last war, there was a critical shortage of typewriters in Britain; I found the history of one enterprising fellow who specialised in recycling war damaged typewriters and reconditioning them for sale to all the major newspapers.

Journalists everywhere bashed out their copy on a Remington ‘Noiseless’ or an Underwood. I can’t see that great literature is ever going to be produced by using your thumb to tap the ‘P’ key three times until it reluctantly disgorges an ‘r’ onto the page – and the phone guesses that you were trying to say ‘perv’……..

You may enter twz d bst of x, twz d wst of x with the speed of light with your thumb, but will it entrance future generations with the resonance of Charles Dickens ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’?

Now the world can only ponderously pick out letters with a stylus or abandon themselves to the predictive text software of the mobile phone. The new Blackberry Curve Touch doesn’t even give them the option.

“The Quick Brown Fox is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Old Mathew had never married. Too shy, maybe? A spurned lover? Perhaps he was just ‘not the marrying kind’, as they used to say in a gentler, less intrusive, age.

He was not unaware of modern mores – his niece had been pregnant at a young age; the school bus driver it was rumoured. The scandal had bedevilled her young life, and she had never married either. She had inherited her parent’s small cottage, and lived a respectable life with her daughter. Old Mathew remained in the grand-parents home, and there had been little communication between the two families, living but yards apart, for many a moon.

Until a surprise letter arrived from a Solicitor in a nearby market town. Mother and Daughter knew that Mathew had died, found lying cold in his bed one January Sunday afternoon by concerned members of the local church – Mathew had never missed Sunday Service before. Mother and Daughter had viewed the funeral from the church gate, still outcasts after 25 years. There were no other relatives to see Old Mathew on his way; but still, old enmities die hard, and the funeral was no time to intrude into Mathew’s world.

Now I stood with Mathew’s great-niece, in the back yard of an old cottage deep in the Norfolk fens. She clutched the letter from the Solicitor, her passport to stand in this forbidden land.

We viewed the cottage from the yard. One half had totally collapsed: no roof, no chimney. A veritable pile of rubble. A pump and a bucket in the centre of the yard. A collection of outhouses, pig pens, chicken coops.

“Have you a key” I asked?

“No, it’s probably hidden somewhere” she said.

We tentatively pushed open the old latch doors to the outhouses. Some chickens rose up in alarm and scattered. We felt our way along dust covered beams, over doorways, in all the places that a key might have lay – nothing.

The back door didn’t look very strong, perhaps the bolt was rusty. “Shall I?” I said.

It wasn’t locked. There had never been a lock, rusty or otherwise. It was dark inside, and I fumbled for a light switch. I couldn’t find one. We stumbled towards the window by the light from the open door, and managed to pull back the old curtain, near rusted to its hook and wire fastening. The fabric was disintegrating as we tugged. Whoever had closed it had done so with great care – it was many years since that curtain was in service. Curtain is too grand a term, it was but a length of fabric, roughly sewn across the top, and the wire inserted into the envelope this provided.

There was the most terrible smell inside that room. Now with light, we could see why. Under a blackened beam across the one remaining chimney in that building stood an old range. I am not speaking of the sort of old fashioned Rayburn you might see in an abandoned railway cottage. I mean a really old, cast iron, range, the sort that Antique dealers ship to America for thousands of pounds. Above the range hung a collection of rabbits from wire hooks.

We remembered the old garden hoe we had seen in the outhouse and I ran out to get it; carefully unhooking each mouldering carcass, I slung them as far down the garden as I could. It marginally improved the smell.

Having refilled our lungs with fresh air, we ventured back inside. Now I could see why I hadn’t been able to locate the light switch – there wasn’t one. There was no electricity. Not just no electricity, but no running water either. The pump in the yard was the sole water supply.

The letter had instructed my young friend to see if she wanted any of the contents of the cottage before it was put up for auction. Old Mathew had left his entire estate to her, the estate that had once been his parents, the parents who had never spoken to her, the bastard child of their only daughter.

What contents? We looked around the single room – a solitary chair by the range, so worm eaten it would never survive the journey to the auction house. A table that had once been respectable, but the top had perished and been replaced with an old latch door. A rough wooden cupboard with two drawers. That was it, apart from a few enamel cooking vessels and some rusty tins above the cooking range.

We crept up the stairs, afraid at every step they would collapse. In the single room above, stood Mathew’s iron bed. On the back of the door, Mathew’s ‘Sunday suit’ – presumably he had been buried in the clothes he died in, there was nothing else, just a pair of working boots neatly stowed at the end of the bed. Oh, and a Bible on a night stand. In the corner of the room – several hundred apples, each carefully wrapped in newspaper. The bounty from the apple tree in the yard.

The sum total of Mathew’s possessions. Near 90 years of life on this earth, and the man owned nothing ‘cept that which was essential to his survival. Much later, a neighbour who had been present when his body was found returned the gun which had lived behind the door – taken for safekeeping since the cottage couldn’t be locked.

Before we left, I took down the rusty tins; they were an interesting shape, cars, buses, trams. I shook one, it rattled interestingly, but was so rusty I couldn’t open it there and then.

Now back at my house in a neighbouring village, we sprayed WD40 on the tins and managed to prise them open. Inside were dozens of small brown envelopes. Every tin revealed the same contents.

Pay packets, stretching back years, each one containing a crisp white fiver and a few coins. Coins that were long since out of circulation – as were the notes. We laid them out on the table – for each year there were approaching 50 envelopes, but always one two or three missing from the set. Almost £5,000 in total, in defunct English currency.

Eventually the Bank of England exchanged those notes, it took months. The cottage sold at auction. My friend’s Mother refused to have the rusty old tins in the house, they were thrown away. She bought an ultra smart sports car with the money – one in the eye for the village which had despised her and her Mother.

She sent me a newspaper cutting last week. An identical biscuit tin, not so rusty perhaps, had sold for £900! Just one of them. Mathew had a dozen of them.

Mathew had worked, he had a job in the local bakery; but he had not worked for the money. For pleasure? For Christian duty? Who knows? He had simply never felt the need to open his pay packets.

The nearby woods provided game, the yard gave him vegetables, the apple tree fruit; he had a set of clothes, a bible, and a range. He had never wanted more. His only connection to the modern world proved to be his demand for ‘rates’ every year, presumably the time when he reluctantly opened a pay packet.  There were no other bills to pay.

Will people like Mathew ever exist again, men so utterly content with their existence that they remain detached from the materialistic world?

The Gospel According to Mathew. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Molière’s Monsieur Tartuffe would have been proud of the Maire of Neuville-en-Ferrain, near Lille.

“Cachez ce sein que je ne saurais voir!“

A bust of ‘Marianne’ is essential in every formal office of the Mairie. It is under ‘Marianne’s’ gaze that each young couple is married. Unfortunately, the bust of Marianne that Maire Cord had purchased some years ago, was more embonpoint than was the taste of his community. ‘Too busty to be a bust’ was their decision, so it has now been replaced with a slimmer version of Marianne, much to the amusement of the French media today.

Meanwhile in the UK, Rigby and Peller are pleased to announce that they have introduced a 48N cup to their regular range of large size bras. In France, anything over a 36B sees you sent off in disgrace to the ‘outsize department’….

Pity the Sunday Sport went ‘tits up’ yesterday, they had their knockers (©Saul) but they would have loved these titbits…..

A tale of Two Titties. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Mr G dusted down his funeral suit on Saturday. He’s only worn it twice. Unfortunately, the second time was to attend the funeral of the friend who’d lent him the suit for the first occasion, so its gathered dust in the wardrobe ever since. He doesn’t own another suit.

This time it was off to a much happier occasion. His best friend was getting married. Mr G was honoured to be best man. Best man has a formal role to play in a French marriage; he is the legal witness to a revered civic state. It was preceded by several visits to the Mairie accompanied by unfamiliar ‘English’ documents, to prove that although he may not have the all important carte famille which follows a French baby throughout life, he was in fact legitimately the person well known to the Marie as Mr G. It is a lot easier in Britain to get married than it is to witness a wedding over here.

You can have as many church ceremonies as you wish, in whatever denomination you choose, but until the M. Le Maire has pronounced you man and wife, you are not married. Our friends had decided to dispense with all the flimflam and head straight for the Mairie.

Miss Four and Master Four and a half, dressed in their ‘confirmation’ suits accompanied us. You only get confirmed once, why buy special outfits for a similar occasion? We had an Aunt in tow too, to act as witness for the Bride, a far more ‘regular’ witness than the Groom’s.

It is a decidedly personal service. The Mairie is well known to us, we go there for literally every mortal contact with civic life, from complaining about a stale loaf of bread to penning the painfully formal letter necessary to address your MP. No unfamiliar setting for this wedding, it is as familiar as our own front rooms.

M. Le Maire appeared with his formal sash in situ, and kissed everyone in sight; he is a neighbour, well known to us all – why would we elect someone we don’t know to run our lives? With the formalities in place long before the wedding, the event itself was a good natured ten minute affair, accompanied by much laughter, culminating in the presentation of a huge bouquet on behalf of everyone living in our commune.

Miss Four and Master Four and a half sat quietly, and never uttered a peep until the correct moment for everyone to exchange kisses once again.

We set off for the wedding breakfast, stopping unexpectedly at a local bar for a glass of the local delicacy, Monbazillac. Every shopkeeper and customer we passed rushed out to congratulate the couple, most continued onto the bar with us. ‘Nibbles’ were hastily produced from the local grocery store – it is unthinkable in France to drink without accompanying food. The crowd had grown by now; ‘Jen’s’ cousins are a standing joke in our household, virtually everything we try to do, from repairing our car to buying garden manure, inevitably involves trading with one of ‘Jen’s’ cousins. The Groom hails from Tunisia and has no family in the area. Everybody who arrived had to be kissed, and in turn had to kiss everyone present.

Miss Four and Master Four and a half were lifted from their high bar stools every few minutes to do the rounds kissing the latest arrival. In between they sat quietly chatting to each other over a glass of cola.

We arrived at the restaurant at midday. More cousins and Aunts turned out to be hiding in the shadows – extra tables and chairs were added to the already 12 foot long table spread with rose petals. The menu may sound exotic in England; a soup made of ceps, followed by Fois Gras then roast Guinea Fowl, finally the lettuce – I believe it is illegal to eat in France without consuming some of the lettuce mountain, summer or winter – turned up with the cheese platter, and then dessert, wedding cake, coffee and more nibbles.

Every item of food came from within a few miles of here – it is the food their grand-parents ate, why would you want anything else? The bill came to 12 Euros a head – it was the normal midday menu! We paid extra for some excellent bottles of Château Joubert and champagne – the wedding cake was a gift from the restaurant.

Miss Four and Master Four and a half sat quietly throughout the four hour meal. They spoke only when spoken to, answered politely, and then went back to their private conversation. They stood on their chair once, but only to be the same height as everyone else when the toast was announced, and sipped champagne with us.

Grand-Mere sat at the head of the table, gone was the floral tabard I am used to seeing her in; in its place was a manicured, coiffured and beautifully dressed Grand Dame. The conversation never flagged, these people see each other every day, yet conversation over a table full of food and wine is the norm here, they learn from childhood – see Miss Four and her companion. Nobody was remotely drunk, nor were there any family disagreements.

Five hours later we walked home – but only to shower and change, for the wedding dinner was due to convene again at 7pm in the tiny, and I do mean tiny, cottage that we rent to the bride and groom. How would they fit everyone in?

Extra tables and chairs had been borrowed, all surplus furniture parked in the garage. The kitchen is some three foot by five foot, but the groom had prepared a meal for 20 odd people. Then more arrived. Everybody squeezed past everybody else to ensure that each got a kiss, especially Miss Four and Master Four and a half. It was all of two hours since we had seen each other last.

The wine flowed, another four course meal appeared. Such was the pressure for space that Miss Four and her co-conspirator sat in their own tiny chairs throughout, but were still included in the conversation.

At 11pm, a whisper in their Father’s ear, a nod, and the pair of them trooped upstairs, only to reappear minutes later in their bed clothes for the procession of good night kisses. We never heard from them again – taken themselves off to bed after 12 hours of adult conversation.

Meanwhile, someone turned on the news; in Magaluf, a large group of Englishmen had arrived to follow that sedate English game of cricket. They had had a few drinks, as you do. One of them bled to death after his companion cut his throat with a broken glass.

I should have tried to explain. Really, I should. My French wasn’t up to it. I’m not sure I could have done so in English.

A Tale of Two Nations. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

One of the mysteries of blogging is ‘who are you actually addressing’? Who are the people responsible for the ‘hits’ on your site?

The only way I can write is to address Gloria and Saul – they are real people, I feel comfortable talking to them. Everybody else is welcome to eavesdrop – and I’m delighted that you do.

I have had my suspicions as to the identities of some of the other characters who arrive here on a daily basis – I’m looking at you Randy Hack, directly at you – but it turns out my exotic fantasies are nowhere near as far fetched as the truth.

Did you know that 80% of ‘under fives’ are on line at least once a week? Yep, toddlers, surfing the net, using Skype, and chatting in the forums?

If you look at the figures for 3 to 5 year olds, 25% of them are on line daily.

Did you realise that some of your readers aren’t out of nappies yet?
Mind boggling!

OK, adapt and survive.

Goo, goo, ga ga, itchee cou cou cou…..

Who are you talking to? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Mr T, who came before Mr G, in my dyslexic litany of marriages, once offered to move a boiler for me so that I could squeeze another piece of kitchen equipment into the resulting space. The offer came as a surprise to both of us; he wasn’t noted for his utilitarian qualities.

A full quorum of brothers were commanded to attend; Scousers operate in packs when faced with hard work, it spreads the load, with luck each one will only have to lift the occasional drinking arm.

Given the limited space currently occupied by the boiler, three of them were exceptionally lucky, there was only space for No 1 brother to actually do anything, leaving the other three free to sit round the kitchen table dishing out advice. It’s thirsty work, advising an amateur plumber.

Eventually the only two bolts were undone, reluctant and by then somewhat inebriated advisors were commanded to lift the appliance into its new position, and lots were drawn as to who would undertake the arduous task of reconnecting it.

One by one they crawled under the counter, cursed, swore, invoked the patron saint of all Liverpudlians, St. OurKid’llDoit, and retired defeated. Finally the brains of the outfit crawled under the counter (otherwise known as No 2 brother if you’re interested) and delivered his technical assessment to the impressed audience – ‘you need a 3/8^th whitworth to 5mm connector’, or words to that effect. The exact dimensions are mercifully lost to the memory of distant marriages.

A spare brother, all seats round the table now occupied, was despatched to the local ironmongers to acquire such an item. He returned empty handed. Next in line was duly despatched to the local garage. He too returned disgusted with the lack of availability of 3/8^th whitworth to 5mm connectors, but had had the good sense to call in at the off-licence and pick up fresh supplies the better to reconnect the assembled neurons, shared out as they were between four craniums.

After much deliberation, No 2 brother, possessor of the only complete brain cell, stumbled out to his car and drove to a nearby forge. There he commanded manufacture of such a connector. In no time at all it was assembled, and after a quick snifter in the Dog and Ferret to bolster his courage, returned triumphant. Elated at their enterprise, they quickly fitted the offending beast, turned the gas and water back on, retired to the kitchen table, and sat staring uncomprehendingly as water poured out of every available orifice – the gas cooker, the gas fire, and indeed the gas boiler.

T’was then I returned. Being on a somewhat higher intellectual plane, if I say so myself, I requested, very politely under the circumstances, that the water be turned off.

I turned on the tap to fill the kettle, and in a split nano second diagnosed the problem they had been so puzzled by. If the water was coming out of the gas fire, where was the gas? I also threw all five of them out into the garden, heavy smokers one and all, and ran with the speed of light to a neighbour to phone the Gas Board.

The Gas Board arrived and phoned for the Water Board. They were puzzled to discover the Gas meter full of water, rather than Bingo tokens, lengths of wire and the odd grudgingly inserted 2 bob piece – even in Liverpool water was unusual.

Two sets of engineers peered under the counter.

‘Bloody Hell’ said set one to set two.

‘Where’d’ya get that connector?’

‘Had it made’ said No 2 proudly, if a little unsteadily.

‘Couldn’t buy one then our La?’

‘That still doesn’t stop them though, does it’ said set two to set one.

‘What do I do now’ said No 1 brother.

‘If I were you laddy, I’d stick me ‘ead in the oven and drown yerself’ was the historic reply.

The point of this tale was that Murphy’s Law was invented for situations like this. Amateur plumbers, and indeed the old fashioned variety of professional plumbers, those artefacts before they went all monarchic and Corgiified, were protected from connecting the mains water to the gas oven by the simple expedient of not making connectors that would enable you to do so – you weren’t expected to have a full set of brain cells, just work with the tools and parts provided and you couldn’t go wrong.

You’re wondering where I am going with this aren’t you? Actually just amusing myself, but tag along for the ride, you’re welcome.

Somewhere in the last 40 years, plumbers no longer learnt from their Father or their elder brother, they went to classes, got certificates and everything. Wore boiler suits to protect their Sunday jeans an’ all they did.

Not enough for 2011, No Siree! What has set me off today this morning is that I discovered an Academy, an academy no less, of plumbing has been set up. Scottish Gas are now training ‘an army’ of ‘engineers’ to ‘support a sustainable, modern, low-carbon economy’.

Housing and communities minister Alex Neil said: “[Scottish Gas’s] Green Academies will provide people with the right skills to work in the rapidly expanding eco sector. This offers opportunities for a whole new generation of young people – a green army for Scotland – helping to support a sustainable, modern, low-carbon economy.”

I get this image of blonde, blue eyed Scottish youngsters in matching green shirts and Lederhosen marching across the glens to the stirring bagpipe sound of ‘Mobilising Gaia for Copenhagen in ‘C’ minor’. I see neighbour reported unto area co-coordinator for failing to install solar heating, I see wind farms in every school yard.  I see elderly men dragged out of their homes at dawn for daring to set fire to a lump of coal in the dead of night. I foresee a future in which every Scottish youngster will attend University for the approved degree in ‘flogging atmospheric carbon dioxide monitors’ to fearful households as the minimal entry requirement for admission to the Green Army.

What will we do for plumbers then?

No Corgi’s were harmed in the making of this post.

A Shaggy Corgii Tale… is a post from: Anna Raccoon