New! Hypochondriasis induction service.

I was going to do a funny post today but then I read this in the Guardian and got spitting-mad so you'll have to put up with a rant instead.
If you are a completely healthy person and you pay an outrageous amount of money for a full body scan you are a total twat.
Why you cry? "Isn't it a good thing to know that everything is OK and there are no lurking tumours or aneurysms waiting to kill you at any moment?"

No No No No No and again NO.

To quote the article "She had experienced no symptoms whatsoever, but it could have burst at any moment: the scan's locating of it allowed a relatively easy surgical fix."

But what, as would often be the case, there is no easy surgical fix. Then you have to live your life with a death sentence, would that make you feel better or worse do you think?
The other thing is that in the average middle-aged person the liklihood of having a normal scan is small. They would find little lumps and bumps which may or may not be dangerous. You will then be forced to have annual complete body scans to check if the innocuous lumps have changed or grown, making lots of money for the scan companies which is the aim of the whole bloody exercise.
Everyone who goes in for this sort of thing is seeking reassurance but not everyone will get it so think long and hard before subjecting yourself to an unnecessary investigation.

If however you are fascinated by scans and anatomy I can recommend Mr. realdoc's favourite site in the whole world, here. Marvel at the pretty pictures. I have a feeling that this is what he sees at moments of high emotion so wonderfully described by patroclus.

PS Someone found my blog by searching google for the phrase 'lard haemorrhoid'...a world first?

Staring into the maw of the beast.

Last night I decided to confront the beast that I will be facing and watched 'skins'. (It doesn't appear to have a capital letter, presumably increasing its appeal to the texting generation of barely literate youth.) The characters are all bright and shiny and good-looking and confident. Remind you of your youth? No me neither.
The teenagers frolicked and danced, had sex, took drugs and chatted up their teachers whilst running rings around their cartoon-crap parents. Now when I was young (you don't think you'll you ever say that phrase but you will, you will) I was miserable and embarrassed, greasy, spotty and deeply anti-social. In the company of adults I was monosyllabic, with my friends earnest and with the opposite sex terrified. Most of the time, however I was alone in my bedroom reading dark and obscure works of fiction, writing appalling angst-ridden verse or cataloging my record collection. Not much drama for a TV series there.
Now, maybe I had a worse adolescence than most, but I do not recognise the version of those terrible years portrayed in 'Skins'*. I shall not be watching it again. As well as being bright and shiny all the characters were smug, shallow and very dull.
Are teenagers that different now or was I suffering from some sort of sociopathic personality disorder?
So, were your adolescent years the best of your life or the night of the living dead?


* I am an adult and will therefore use the appropriate punctuation.

All that's topical in Ireland

Despite the fact that there have been some significant news stories in this part of the world, there is only one issue occupying the populace at the moment.


(one of my close relatives)

Where is Craggy Island really?

Thank God for split personalities.

Well ,the builders have dug through the oil pipe by mistake so I have no heating, cooking facilities or hot water. My real self is shivering, starving and getting slightly whiffy.

Meanwhile my blogging persona (see here and here) is lying on a balmy beach on a hammock reading whilst uniformed waiters bring me elaborate drinks served in a coconut.

Here is the view:

Insufficient multitasking capacity.

I have been neglecting my blog a bit as:

• The Northern Irish health service is being reorganised and I have to 'make an impression' if I want to keep my job. I can say 'would you like some toast' in the manner of Sean Connery but I don't think that's going to help somehow.


• My kitchen is being rebuilt so walls down, dust everywhere, intermittant access to the cooker* etc.


• I don't want to be labelled an addict (see last post).


• My eldest is entering her teenage years which seems to involve a lot of door-slamming and mood swings which require me to stand in the corner and be verbally abused in a sarcastic manner and have my make-up nicked.


• I have 28 books piled up next to my bed and I'm feeling guilty about not having read them.


• I'm doing a post-graduate diploma thing which is extremely dull but I have only 4 months to go so I'm supposed to do some assignments and stuff.

So I will be here reading but perhaps not posting and commenting as much as before.

CB wanted to see some examples of Northern Ireland vernacular architecture. Here you are then, don't say I didn't warn you...

*cue noise of mass wincing*

This may not look so bad but in rural Northern Ireland ALL the houses look like this although they may also have large, rampant lions on the gateposts and a 6foot high model of a windmill in the garden. Such houses are often called 'La Ponderosa'.

Addicted to the internet?

I heard on the radio that doctors are going to be asked to quiz patients on their internet addictions as a clue to other addictive and potentially health-threatening behaviours..... oh dear.

Plus first in what is sure to become a longrunning theme:

NOVEL EXCUSES BY FRIENDS NOT TO COME AND VISIT ME IN NORTHERN IRELAND #1

"The vernacular architecture makes me wince."*

*She has a point.

realdoc's diary

......or the weekend I went to London and it all went a bit surreal for a while.

I arrived on Friday and spent a lovely evening with friends. I was quite surprised to see this in their kitchen.....

My mate works at Channel 4 news and apparently the newsroom is now right behind the coke vs kittens campaign. (Even if Jon Snow thinks Ska is an acronym.)

The next day I went here and met this person and this person. However due to a pressing engagement I missed all the rest of you. SORRY!

So I yomped up to this place for the Green Wing convention. After lunch involving hula hoops, caramacs and chocolate cocks I watched a famous actor refereeing a game of guyball involving a lot of ladies with wastepaper bins on their heads in the middle of a roundabout.

(Sorry for the crap photography, I was shivering)

I met some more bloggers and Marsha Klein (blog deceased) and cello (who has a profile but no blog.)

There was also a bloke there who claimed to be an academic investigating online communities, lots of Green Wing related writers and cameramen and other jobs I don't understand and lots of lovely people from the Green Wing forum. Being a skinflint I failed to secure bluecat's signed script in the auction which went for an alarming amount of money.*

There was a Q&A type session involving the writers being grilled on the medical details of Dr. Mac's impending doom and one of the writers kindly spoke to Mr. realdoc on the phone and listened politely whilst all his bile on behalf of the radiology profession was poured forth. ("...and in episode 9 one of the x-rays was upside down"....etc etc ad nauseum).

I had a very brief discussion with a famous person, some thing about Miss Marple and Mica Paris I think but I may have been hallucinating by then.

mangonel....marvel at how close I was to the back of his head.

It was very nice to discover that not as many of you as I had feared had bizarre personality disorders.

Now I'm going for a bit of a lie down.

*Seeing he was there and could have signed something anyway.

I'm going to a convention....

Well, it's going to be an exciting weekend. I am heading to London for the Green Wing convention. I have never been to a convention before and so I'm not quite sure what to expect.* Hopefully I will meet some of you there but I have been instructed that I am unable to give details of the venue etc in case we become targets for international espionage or something.

If you see a bewildered middle-aged woman wandering around clutching a yoyo and a packet of hulahoops, but NOT dressed in scrubs with stethoscope accessories, that will be me. Send me an email and I will let you know, roughly, which part of London I'll be in.

*Word on the street is that there may be quite a lot of people with wastepaper baskets stapled to their heads, this remains to be seen.

P.S. All this time I thought messing around on the internet was just time wasting. Little did I know I was developing my soul. The cybergeek will inherit the earth, apparently.

Blogging in a vacuum #2

Blogger is being a total bastard* again just when some interesting posts were turning up, see here. So if you are all doing brilliant posts and I haven't commented it's because bastard blogger says I'm a computer virus or some such nonsense. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

Meanwhile you should watch this. The problem with the NHS is that doctors are all bastards*, apparently.

*bastard is my swear of the day

Another one of these...

Well I did another podcast and you can get it here.

I have also been trying to work out what Mac is dying from but as nearly every fatal illness I can think of has an 'A' and an 'E' in it I haven't made much progress.* I was slightly stunned when I saw it last night but it is much funnier on second viewing, highlights:

• new shouty radiologist (Mr realdoc loved him)
• New improved Karen and the office girls going native
• you shat in my vodka?
• you cannae, you didnae etc etc
• drunk Mac and Guy
• 'I meant inside her womb, not up her'
• Hiding a body with cornflakes
• that suit!!!!!!!!!!!!
• The fact that Joanna and Statham made me cry at the end ...etc etc etc

The end of the funniest programme on telly by miles, I will miss it very much. Congratulations to everyone involved. I will buy you a drink if I ever meet any of you...

*UPDATE It must be Menke's Kinky Hair Syndrome. How could I be so blind, Green Wing has always been about the hair.

Nice one centurion!

According to a classics teacher of my acquaintance the Roman soldier on Torchwood last night was shouting, 'I'm hard me! Be afraid! Be very afraid!
Well there's a joke aimed at a narrow demographic, but admirable nonetheless.

New Year's unrealistic aspirations

I hate New year's resolutions, they're pointless and I never keep to them so this year I decided to have some unrealistic aspirations instead.
I am wondering about whether I should consider becoming transhuman; which, I'll concede is more ambitious than resolving to go to the gym occasionally, but probably just as unlikely.
I could become a poet or improve my cooking or, better still, combine the two.
I could learn Finnish as I fancy going to Finland but it is a confusing language and I'm not getting very far on this forum so far.
I could get a new man but after a certain age they all look the same to me.

So there you have it, my unrealistic aspirations for 2007. So in all probability I will just keep posting the same old nonsense in the hope that someone is reading it. Although, ahem,because of this I will have to do another podcast.

Finally a little piece of advice to all you women out there, if the man in your life is irritating and difficult to get rid of, why not give a gift that sums up his inner qualities.