What’s Happening At Home: a round-up of the oddities of UK news

Zoë Sharp

I confess that I have not been spending much time at my keyboard over the last week or so. Not through any lack of desire of my part, but because I’ve been on too many drugs.

No, not the illegal type – the kind you have to be prescribed by the nice medical gentlemen at the local doctor’s surgery.

I’ve got a bad back.

Bad backs are traditionally the butt of many jokes. Apparently one in three people in the UK will suffer back pain this year, and it’s been one of the main excuses for those who wish to have time off work.

Trust me, I’d far rather be working.

But, I’ve been dutifully following the advice of my physio regarding posture, heat and exercise, and as my office typing chair is the most comfortable one to sit in, I hope to be spending more time in it. With suitable frequent breaks for moving around and loosening up again.

So, this week I thought I’d look at the oddities that have hit the news in the UK over the last few days.

The first of these was that on September 9^th the Queen became this country’s longest serving monarch, just surpassing the record set by her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, who reigned for 63 years 216 days.

The shortest reigning UK monarch was Queen Jane, who proclaimed queen shortly after the death of Edward VI in 1553, and ousted by Mary I just nine days later, and subsequently executed.

No doubt the Royal Mint will bring out celebratory coinage to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s landmark occasion, but for the moment they won’t be as valuable as a fifty pence coin brought out to celebrate the London Olympics in 2012.

As you can see from the two coins pictured here, the design on the left was changed shortly after its introduction to make the swimmer’s face more clear. Sufficiently low numbers of the original were produced to make them change hands for up to £850.

In politics, Jeremy Corbyn has just been elected leader of the Labour party after clocking up 251,417 votes – 59.5% of the vote. His nearest rival received just 19%. After the last few years of plastic politicians in Westminster, it’s refreshing to find an apparently honourable man with genuine left-wing beliefs holding the most powerful position in the party that always used to represent the more left-wing view. I wish him the best of luck.

A couple from Indiana have relocated to the UK because they claim to have fallen in love with an English pub – The Plough Inn in Shustoke, near Coventry. Matthew and Delores Lawrence decided it was everything an English pub should be, so they upped and made it their local. Matthew has transferred to a UK branch of his loss adjuster firm, while their son, Achilles, has applied to Coventry University.

OK, time for me to lie down with more drugs. What’s the news from where you are?

This week’s Word of the Week is hamartia, meaning the character flaw or error of a tragic hero that leads to his downfall. It comes from the Greek hamartánein, meaning ‘to miss the mark’ or ‘to err’, and was first used by Aristotle. 

My Turn to Kvetch

Kvetch: an ancient Greek term meaning “to complain incessantly, but not to the level of bitching.”

A rainy day in Manhattan's Kips Bay

So, where to start?  Right where I sit is probably as good a place as any: a Manhattan dermatologist’s office on a rainy, windy, miserable day, wondering what that mysterious rash on the back of my legs may be.  The pain is yet to come.  No, not from the rash or paying for the visit—he’s worth every penny—but getting from the sitting to a standing position, for I’m also strapped into a back brace and leaning over like a politician trying to pick a school kid’s pocket. (Warning: Bitching Level Approach Alert (“BLAA”)).

I don’t need a doctor to tell me why that is.  It’s the residual effect of my Sunday night/Monday morning air odyssey into New York City.  The same one I first complained about Monday on Leighton’s blog.  Did you miss it?  Too bad, here are a few choice bits leading up to this kvetch:

“It was a dark and stormy night. Yes, last night surely was. And as I sat into the second hour on an otherwise deserted eastern Pennsylvania runway with 200 pilgrims from Minneapolis diverted by prudent flying (and wind shear) from reaching New York City, all seemed lost. We were in Allentown.  Billy Joel lyrics kept running through my mind.”

But it didn’t end there.  We finally reached NYC’s LaGuardia airport at two in the morning.  So did hundreds from other flights, all of them waiting in the rain in a line for taxis.  Godot would arrive sooner than my cab.  I’d been up since 4 AM Sunday and had to be up again in time for an 8 AM meeting, then another at eleven, and the rest of the day spent among lawyers, my former breed.

By the time I made it home from LaGuardia I had barely enough time to catch a few hours sleep before the meetings.  But I made it through them all without dozing off (too often) and was back in bed by eight…falling off to sleep, perchance to…

I never should have answered the phone.  “Jeffrey, where are you, we’ve been waiting since seven!”

OH, NO.  I’d completely forgotten dinner plans I could not miss.  It was with friends who’d shared extraordinary insights for my just completed novel, and were offering even more for the next.  So, forty minutes later I’m sitting on a barstool, and remained there for three hours talking, eating, and drinking.

Next morning my back said, “And just where do you think you’re going?”  For most of the day we negotiated over the subject of my being able to walk, but finally reached an agreement that allowed me to make my NYC book signing that evening at Greenwich Village’s Partners & Crime, provided I wore a corset-like contraption and popped ibuprofen like jellybeans.

The plan was a simple in and out and back to bed.  But, I should have known better, for no event involving Greeks, food, and wine ever ends predictably.  This one went on until nearly midnight, shifting venues along the way.

Today, I’m paying the price for dissolute ways.  My back’s out, I’m scratching like a dog with fleas, and wondering what in the world to write for my blog.  I feel as if a Kathy Bates Misery moment would be an improvement.  BLAA, BLAA.

Whoops, got to run, time to see the doctor.  I’ll let you know what happens.

Pause.

Ahh, relief.  It’s just poison ivy, contact dermatitis to be precise.  But how, you may ask, did I contract poisoned ivy in the middle of a winter book tour?  Perhaps touching up against some contagious sort of material in a book aisle?  Possibly, but I doubt it.  More likely it’s tied into a two-day break I took clearing brush at my farm.  Maybe I should consider this a warning to stick to writing and leave the chainsaw work to critics?

Office of the world's greatest dermatologist

Bottom line, all is right again with the universe because this super doctor is also a magician.   He made my back feel better and changed the outlook on my day with just a few simple words added to his poison ivy diagnosis: “By the way, Jeffrey, I loved Prey on Patmos and am a big fan.”

How little it takes to cure a writer of kvetching.

Jeff — Saturday