Bluecat

Day Two Sam got a reasonable night's sleep. The medical lady came in the morning, took blood pressure, breathalysed Sam (the medication he's taking this week reacts badly with booze so if he's drinking we have to stop the meds at once) and brought the next day's dosage. His blood pressure is up a bit, but that's expected. He was shaking quite a bit at first, and seemed pretty bedraggled, but seemed better after sitting in the sun with his dad for a couple of hours this morning: they've both enjoyed that. I took the dog out. It's been a fantastically lovely day here: the blossom out in the hedgerows thick enough that I could smell it from across the road. It makes such a difference when there's lots of sunlight (even though it's chilly). I got some writing done, B practised the flute, Sam did some weights in the garden. They took the dog out again at about 5 - Sam jogged and Bendigo pottered along the lanes - while I cooked supper. He was able to jog a couple of miles without his foot hurting, which is very good indeed. He's really quite fit, which is a blessing. (Frankly, it seems unfair: ah, youth!) He seems more upbeat, and is discussing plans for what he's going to do next. So... a good day for all of us. From tomorrow the medication diminishes until Saturday, by which time he should have lost the physical symptoms of addiction. They're watching TV together by a log fire. I'm going to stroll down the lane and look at the millions of stars which I don't normally get to see in the city.

Hi Brother - thank you for your interest and the pointers. Good questions indeed. In the 8 years I've known him, I've seen that he uses alcohol to "self medicate". He is an anxious, hyperactive type - according to his parents he has been ever since birth: "born with his fists clenched" - and is shy in social situations until the first pint or two is swallowed, where his face clears and he becomes relaxed and self-confident. This fits all too well with teen and youth culture round our way, too: all his friends are drinking and getting-stoned friends, most of his relationships would not have started without booze. (We're in England, where if alcohol vanished tomorrow, most single people would never get laid again). Unfortunately the "dosage" is kept up all evening (and into the next day, and increasingly has been starting at lunchtime or before), and he does not always become pleasanter to be around in proportion as he feels more sociable. Yes indeed. We are - although we being his mother, father and (me) his step-mum, we know that we may not be the best people for it. The lady who is conducting the detox (thanks to the great British National Health Service, long may it last) is medically trained and a counsellor, and has done a lot of these. He has the option of counselling in the follow-up. He was going to an AA-type group nightly, but has been horrified by the stories he heard. And, it must be said, he tends to look down on the "other alcoholics" he has met. He hasn't accepted that, in one important respect at least, he is like them. One of the things he will have to deal with is learning how to make friendships without depending on the booze and the blow to help him. He could also do with building bridges with his 2 younger siblings, who have become a bit alienated, because they don't want to be around him when he's drunk. He is not violent, but he can be a relentlessly nagging bully. His attitude at the moment is that they have let him down. Partly (I think) that's because his sibs have left home and had some of the kinds of success in the world that his parents know how to value, while he, the oldest, never has. The things Sam is good at (software developing and football (soccer to you) ) are things neither of his parents know much about or have much interest in, whereas the other two kids are good at art, music, academic study, which his parents understand and value. It is tough, but that's the way things go in families. I know he feels it. Then Sam broke his toe when drunk, didn't get it seen to for 6 weeks. He was embarrassed because he couldn't remember, or wouldn't admit, how he'd done it. It got infected and he's still limping, so he can't play football or go running. Then his girlfriend broke up with him because of his drinking, so he went out at lunchtime, drank a litre of vodka, went back to work legless and got sacked from his software developing job. So those two things that he has been good at, sport and computing, are currently not available for him. This is one reason why he's come to see he has a problem. Anyway, today was Day One. So far so good. He's been feeling sick and shaky and very tired, and rather sorry for himself. He has eaten OK, and we took him out for a walk on the beach (one of the most beautiful places we know, anywhere in the world, though it was a bit chilly), with the dog. He's watching TV with his Dad right now and they are having a chat. Thank you all for your prayers and good wishes. I appreciate it very much.

Please pray for Sam this week and after. He has been drunk most days, and stoned most weeks, since he was 15. He's now 27, and has come to the end of it (we hope), having lost 2 jobs - one he hated, one he really liked and was good at - in succession, and his very lovely girlfriend over the last few months. This coming week he is undergoing a supervised detox which will (we are assured) end his physical symptoms of dependancy. He will still have to deal with the psychological side of things after that. He's struggling with the idea that he can be himself without booze. From Monday to Saturday this week while he goes through the detox, he cannot be alone. So his Dad and I will do 5 days and Sam's Mum, who's working away, will do 1. So we need your prayers too, that we can work with each other and with Sam to help him and each other through it.

Ouch ooch ouch! I hope it goes well. Custard, jelly (sorry, jello), ice-cream for afterwards...

Indeed. As I say, he's currently in Country B without a legal passport or a visa. I don't know what the real story about his marriage is (and don't particularly want to know), or what might be awaiting him in the US, but my knowledge of the country in which he currently resides makes me extremely sure he does NOT want to spend time in prison there. As for his income - I don't know how he is managing in Country B, as it is (theoretically at least) impossible to get legal work there without all the documentation. He is obviously working illegally. If he returns to the states, he does not have a job to go to. Even so, my own opinion is that he'd better do the time (if any) in the States soon than wait until he's caught, does hard time in country B and then jail in the USA. Apart from anything, he was neither young nor particularly fit when I first knew him 11 years ago, and I doubt the trend is improving.

Taj Mahal - that's one I'd forgotten. And Gong (very odd). Viv Stanshall, two nights running, doing Sir Henry at Rawlinson End at the LSE. Lots of bands at various Womad gigs: The Bhundu Boys, Orkestra Baobab, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan the amazing Sufi man-mountain. (As Iain Banks says, you always have a faint suspicion he may be singing "hey hey, let's string up Salman Rushdie, hey hey"). Most recently I saw Womad concerts in a sandcastle-style fort in Arabia... an amazing free event. Tragic Roundabout....

OK, excuse me if this is in the wrong place, but there are more Americans on this board than anywhere else I know, so can anyone give me a few pointers? I am in occasional email contact with a US citizen who lives in another foreign country (not the US, and not where I live either). This person has asked me what ideas I can offer him about his legally anomalous situation. I'm seeing this as a counseling situation, as I have (as he well knows) no legal knowledge or expertise. This guy's story, as told to me, is that he was reluctant to return to the US as he had a massive claim for unpaid maintenance outstanding from his ex-wife. According to him, he faces jail time. Apparently (also according to him) jail without possibility of remission unless the maintenance is paid, which he states is impossible for him. As a result, he has failed to renew his US passport in the country where he now lives. He states that he believes if he goes to the US embassy he will be seized and deported. So he is currently living as an illegal - no passport, no visa - in that country. It is becoming more difficult to do this, as various laws have been tightened up. My 'ideas" are that his choice is to (a) continue living illegally until he gets caught, resulting in jail time in the country he's now in, followed by whatever the US has in store for him, or (b) turn himself in at the embassy, which might at least minimise or obviate jail time in the place he's in now. It might help me advise him if I had a better idea of what the US system might actually have in store for him. Can anyone explain this? His home state is Texas but his marriage he says was in Arkansas. In the UK most child maintenance from absent Dads is never collected at all. An agency was set up to improve this, but has been disbanded as the cost of pursuing maintenance exceeded what was ever collected.

Thanks for that. A life worth living and worth remembering.

Happy festival of the Lactating Sheep!

The first concert I ever saw was on Christmas Eve 1975, Queen playing at Hammersmith Odeon. Bohemian Rhapsody was at the top of the charts. I saw them again a few times - at Hyde Park, at Wembley, and at a small free gig they did when they recorded the film for 'We Are the Champions' - for which I bunked off school. Santana (twice - Wembley and Crystal Palace) Eric Clapton (supported by Elvis Costello and Freddie King), Bod Dylan in his gospel years (at Blackbush Airfield, where I can't really say I saw him, but I could see his hat), and where he was supported by Joan Armatrading. I saw Pink Floyd twice, once on their Animals tour. I saw Roxy Music and someone on stage seemed to be inviting me and my friend, who were right at the front, to come around backstage - we didn't. Then the punk years: Siouxsie Sioux, XTC, The Damned, The Stranglers at Brunel University. I missed seeing the Sex Pistols (but Johnny Rotten, who now advertises butter, lived in a squat down the road from my parish church and once told someone I knew to ... go forth and multiply... which made him very proud), a strange band called Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds, The Slits (I saw Ari Up died recently), a band called The Jam at a tiny pub in Hammersmith called the Red Cow and where someone said they'd just signed a record contract, and several times the wonderful Ian Dury and the Blockheads, once on the Stiff Records first tour supported by Wreckless Eric and various others... Then I saw UB40 (a local band) at college and came home to find I'd worn holes in my socks from dancing. Saw The Smiths, complete with the chucking of gladioli: didn't do much for me, I must say. Saw a number of bands in and around Liverpool in the 80s: Echo and the Bunnymen, the Teardrop Explodes. I saw Mud and the Glitter Band on a nostalgia tour where I realised I knew all the words. Saw Nina Simone in her old age, but she was still great. John Cooper Clarke, both as a gig and at the Cheltenham Literature festival, where he just told very complicated shaggy dog stories all evening. After that, I was going to Glastonbury on a regular basis, often in the vicinity of a British bluegrass band called The Wild Turkey Brothers who very nearly made it... saw The Levellers, Bjork, and many other gigs by the obscure and less obscure. I saw King Solomon Burke, who died recently, in Naples, supported by Ike Turner and the Ikettes. The most recent, I saw Coldplay a couple of years ago in Abu Dhabi and was bored, though a major electical storm in the middle was exciting.

The Gs are the most married people I know: they got together at university 30 years ago, did their masters' degrees together, and together have taught around the world, from Papua New Guinea to Leeds, raising their three highly intelligent children and clocking up a number of publications on the way. They are never apart except on Mrs G's choir night. They row passionately, and they love each other passionately too. Mr G is a worrier, an anxiety addict, up until something genuinely life-threatening happens (he was totally calm in PGN, where their lives were really in danger). He went to the doc with a persistent upset stomach and was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. The doc thereby missed the following facts: he had a parasitic infection probably picked up on the Black Sea; the parasitic infection was causing anaemia; he was diabetic and - the biggy - he had cancer of the colon. By the time this was actually diagnosed it had spread to his liver and was inoperable. It has, however, responded extremely well to chemical treatment, and has now shrunk to the size of a walnut. On a recent set of tests, where normal 'background' cancerousness rating is 2.5, and a smoker's is 5, G's was down to 8, having been in the thousands when first diagnosed. He has also become much calmer, although his first thought on waking up every day is that he is going to die of cancer. And immediately Mrs G is taken seriously ill. They don't yet know with what - there are several candidates, and all of them bad. She lectures in the medical faculty of a world-class university, so knows a lot about how bad it might be. Prayers please.

I'm thinking of you Salem, and will light a candle for your luck and happiness. I can't do it right now as I'm in the library and candle lighting is frowned upon.

The "Sankta Lucia" procession here is in a Lutheran church in Sweden. I don't know much about Lutherans, except they don't go much in for saints (certainly not compared with RCs), but St Lucy is very important in Sweden: one of the few saints to survive the Reformation there. These are the words: (thanks to Malle) Anyone read Swedish? The "Santa Lucia" that most people know is the Neapolitan version. Same tune, but the words are all about how great Naples is.

My grandmother, Dad and two of my brothers, especially the next one younger to me. I'm a type, kind of. There are a lot of people around who look a bit like me - especially in Ireland, I'm told, although I have no family connections there. Few of them are famous. People you've heard of that I look a bit like: when I was younger and had my hair in a fringe, Lois Lane in the cartoons and as played by the actress opposite Christopher Reeve. My icon here, apart from the ears.

Well, you can see their reasoning Sky! When I was a little girl at a Roman Catholic Primary school, we had a procession with candles (in daylight - who knows why?) in honour of the Virgin Mary, and Mary Silver's hair caught fire. Horrible, horrible.

Well the 13th was St Lucy's day, as in "Tis the year's midnight and the day's, Lucie's, that scarce seven hours herself unmasks" (John Donne from memory and therefore perhaps not quite right). My lovely Swedish-speaking Finnish friend sent me this. St Lucy and the festival of the bringing of light is a big thing in Sweden. The funny thing for me, having lived in Naples in Italy, is that I know Santa Lucia rather differently. It's the same tune though.

Our good friend George the writer needs prayers and good wishes. He was diagnosed with IBS some years ago. It didn't get better and he was generally poorly, so he finally went for a full barrage of tests. Turns out he had amoebic dysentary (had possibly had it for years - he has lived in a number of tropical countries where sanitation is not good). This had made him anemic. Oh and they found out he was diabetic, too. And he has cancer of the colon and started chemotherapy last week.

It looks great. Hope you get it! Best wishes to you both.