How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!

– Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

I can’t believe that it’s now three months or so since I last posted here! Never mind, we have been rather busy, what with buying a new house and moving in.

I will try to post more regularly here in future.

He will watch from dawn to gloom
…Nor heed, nor see, what things they be;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man…

– Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Prometheus Unbound”

‘Mask II’ by Ron Mueck

Today we went to an exhibition of the work of Australian-born hyper-realist sculptor Ron Mueck at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.

I’ve been a huge fan of Mueck’s work since my wife and I stumbled across his work “Ghost” in the Tate in 2000. This striking sculpture is so real that it could be taken for a real human being, frozen in time, if it were not that it was one and a half times normal size. It’s an image of an adolescent girl in a bathing costume, shrinking away from scrutiny – “Leave me alone!” you can almost hear her cry. Yet the audience cannot tear their eyes from her.

If Mueck were merely an incredibly talented model-maker, these works would be fascinating, but that’s all. Yet the realism of his sculpture, combined with huge variations of scale which he often employs, is often shocking; and each of his works is emotionally engaging, sometimes deeply so. There’s no doubt that these are true works of art.

Anyway, we visited the exhibition today and saw more of Mueck’s works “in the flesh” than I have ever managed before.

Here are some inadequate photos to illustrate what we saw. (Taken with my iPhone and enhanced with PhotoAcute software).

'In Bed' by Ron Mueck

'Woman with sticks' by Ron Mueck

'Wild Man' by Ron Mueck

The main reason for this long gap is that I was pushed a bit off balance by the death of my 91-year old father, Bill Grigg, in October.

Though it had been clear for some months that his health was declining rapidly, and he had gone voluntarily into a nursing home in June, it was still a blow when the end eventually came. It was particularly hard, of course, on my mother. They had been married for 60 years.

I don’t want to publish very much about my father here – I’m not much in favor of publishing very personal material to the wide world of the Internet (so call me a dinosaur in this era of twittering every random thought).

I did put together a photo tribute to my father on DVD, which was played at the funeral service, and I also spoke about how, by his example, he contributed greatly to my love of reading, and particularly reading science fiction and fantasy (he was a great fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs).

Speaking of which, I’ll try to catch up in a separate blog, however, briefly, on the reading I’ve done over the last few months.

————–

* Well, disappointing my daughter and my mother, anyway, and possibly two or three others. My wife, I think, doesn’t see much point in reading my blog since she hears most of this stuff from me directly.

We’ve just returned from a short but very pleasant stay in Daylesford, Victoria.

Daylesford is currently being promoted heavily on television at the moment through a commercial which links images of young people having a very good time and a soundtrack of the song “Down in the river to pray” which was featured in the movie “Brother, Where Art Thou?”. It’s a beautiful song, but I have no idea how this religious lyric (inviting everyone to go down and pray in the river) relates to the luxurious and sybaritic lifestyle depicted in the visuals…

Despite this saturation advertising, we weren’t particularly influenced by it to chose Daylesford for a weekend away – it’s close to Woodend, and Castlemaine, where we’ve been many times, and it had been on our list to visit for some time.

Anyway, I took the above photograph while we were ambling around the lake in Daylesford, a comfortable 2 km walk. On the day we had arrived, it was raining heavily (much to be desired in our current drought conditions, but not so good for tourism), but on the next day it was absolutely perfect, not a cloud in the sky, and a mild temperature ideal for walking about.

That night after dinner, we went back down to the edge of the lake and stared up at the night sky. The spread of the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds were very easy to see, and an absolute wealth of stars which are just lost to us in the city. It makes you yearn for the chance to escape the city and see such glory far more often.

No more attacks of absolute agony, lying on the floor stuff. And in general, things are improving, though I’m still on anti-inflammatory medication. But the story seems to be that it’s just the effects of age and a sedentary lifestyle, and the best I can do is to try to strengthen my back muscles to compensate for the ratty state of my spine.

My doctor is encouraging me to take up some exercise which will help with this on-going management, but most of the alternatives she suggested aren’t very appealing. Swimming is apparently the best exercise, but I’ve always hated swimming (very poor eyesight without my glasses means that I’m usually floundering around in the pool with no idea which way to swim). However, she did mention cycling, and many years ago I used to love cycling. So I may eventually drag the rusting old bike from under the house and give it another try.

Just thought you’d like to know….!

‘Are you in pain, dear mother?’

‘I think there’s a pain somewhere in the room,’ said Mrs.
Gradgrind, ‘but I couldn’t positively say that I have got it.’

– Charles Dickens, Hard Times

So a few weeks back I wrote about my back problems. Just to continue the story….

A couple of weeks ago, after continuing lack of improvement (and some deterioration) in my pain levels, the doctor sent me off to get a CT scan of my spine.

My wife drove me across to a nearby medical center to get the scan done, results would be with my doctor the following day.

So, after being scanned, I went home, spent a reasonable evening and just before I went to bed had a dose of the new brand of painkiller my doctor had prescribed, hoping to last through the night.

Instead, at about 1 am, I managed to turn over in a funny way and something seemed to go CLICK! And it wasn’t a good click, let me tell you. In pain, I got up to go to the bathroom and once there everything got much much worse pain-wise. I started to groan very loudly and my wife got up to find me on the edge of passing out, cold sweat, dizzy, the whole damn thing. She got me out of the bathroom, where I sank to the floor and lay on my face on the carpet, unable or unwilling to move.

I’ve found from experiment that a face-down position is the one which gives me least pain, and so it was here. “I’m staying here!” I said, as the pain started to ease a little. Any attempt at getting up created new waves of pain.

We agreed to wait for a while to see if things settled down, so my wife brought me a pillow and a quilt and that’s where I stayed for the next few hours. At about 6 am that morning, we debated and finally agreed that the only option seemed to be to call for an ambulance. She did manage to get me up from the floor and on to a couch to make it easier for the ambulance people, which we managed, but not without re-invoking the whole screaming pain, almost passing out exercise.

So the ambulance arrived and gave me one of those pain-reducing inhalers (which seemed to do very little good). Just before we got to the hospital, they gave me an injection of something stronger (low dose of morphine, I imagine), which after about half an hour waiting in casualty seemed to be having some effect.

In due course I was seen by a doctor, and my wife was able to give her the phone number of the place which had done the CT scan, so the hospital could be faxed a copy of the report.

The good news is that apart from fairly normal age-related deterioration of the spine, there didn’t seem to be any sign on the scan of a prolapsed disc or other nasties. The bad news is that it didn’t show any good reason for the excrutiating pain, either.

I was given more pain relief, and the good news there is that it seems that good old Panadine Forte and Neurofen seemed to be the most effective medications tried so far on my problem. With a good dose of those, my pain started to ease, and eventually they let me go home about mid-morning.

The upshot of all of this is that if I get any more episodes of such severe pain, I’ll need to have an MRI scan done (much more detailed than a CT scan, apparently), but in the meantime, keep taking the tablets. My wife had a good talk with my GP (who had also been faxed the CT results), and her impression is that my problem may still largely be a muscular one, albeit a muscle or two which is severely annoyed with me.

We all hope that I don’t hit another such episode of severe pain, but only time will tell.

Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit…
– T.S.Elliot, The Wasteland

Mediaeval dungeons often had a cell called the “little-ease”, devilishly designed so that the prisoner was unable to find any comfortable position in which to rest.

I feel like I’m in such a place now. I’ve “done my back” – the penalty of years of sitting badly while I program, I fear. I’ve damaged something in my lower back and for the last four weeks I’ve been in some pain and often find myself in a situation where I can “neither stand nor lie nor sit”. Which makes it hard to write software or to blog, or … well, do most things. It’s a nuisance.

Anyway, my physiotherapist and doctor are both working on the problem for me. The key, it seems, is to keep moving at all costs. And regularly do targeted exercises to build up both abdominal and back muscles.

The moral of this lesson to younger programmers (I’m nearly 58) is – be very careful how you sit at the computer.

If you slouch and don’t pay attention to how straight your back is, you may not suffer now, but in years to come you may well be as broken as I am. Get a good chair and sit properly. When your teachers told you to “sit up straight” they had your best interests at heart!