Standing Still

Belfast still stands, imposing in parts, posturing in others, and thoroughly subdued all over. The marching season is over, autumn approaches and the masses of students converge onto the city streets congratulating themselves over respective exam results, or hiding woes in tight jeans and a case of cheap beer, have passed. In regards to architecture, they are a few dotted remains of imaginative masonry and grandeur throughout the streets. Our city hall is surely the one of the most impressive roundabouts in Ireland, as many black cab drivers will confirm.

It remains however a cheerier alternative to Cookstown: that spitting corner of Tyrone, disguised cunningly as a place of urbanite dwelling. In its graveyards, tombstones lie broken and knotted with grass, as if no one here cares to remember the beautiful simplicity of the past, and the dead themselves spend their eternities trying to forget that their souls ever graced as culturally squalid a place as this. Perhaps it is just the typical mentality that curses every patron of small Irish towns, the inability to understand other alternative lifestyles to your own and reluctance to accept shifting changes, especially the inclusion of immigrants. Racially-motivated attacks are growing in East Tyrone at an incomprehensible rate. In Coalisland, the sudden appearance of factions of the Lithuanian Mafia has spirited a strong reaction from locals. In one instance, two Mafia cars roared up and down a street in the town centre, trying to run over people coming out of a pub. Foolish for them, as in Coalisland, people run towards where the trouble is, either to watch or to “help out”. I don’t mean to discredit anyone from Coalisland, I only mention this due to the sheer unbelievable nature of the event. Are these things to be accepted?

In Dungannon, police have to deal with attacks on members of the Portuguese community on a weekly basis. The Chinese community has raced hostile reaction to a community centre in East Belfast. Sometimes I become disillusioned by all of this and wonder if it is really time to leave the country, or would it be better to stay and try to make it a slightly better place to live in somehow?

Checking Yourself

It’s not very often that I talk about my testes on this blog. In fact, I can’t recall ever discussing the matter, something I guess I should be proud of. But for some reason I found myself yesterday harking back to my one and only visit to the radiographer’s. The previous week, I had found a lump, and went to my doc’s to get it checked out. I think it was Dylan Moran who said checking yourself for signs of testicular cancer was like “looking for a lump in a bag of lumps” (If I’ve contributed that to the wrong comedian, I apologise!).
It’s quite disheartening for most men I suppose to have to disrobe and allow another man, as professionally-minded as I sure he was, to allow to fondle your scrotum and roll your testes around. You try to muster up an air of nonchalance as you lie back and wait for those few seconds of diagnosis. His opinion for that it was 99% likely my potentially cancerous lump was merely a cyst, which was apparently quite common in men my age. Nevertheless, it was worthwhile getting scanned for.
Okay, so a 1% chance of cancer is minuscule, yet it’s still a chance, and that was slightly scaring me. I told my manager at work what had happened, but far more embarrassing than that was telling my parents. Goodness knows why I felt obliged to let them. I could have just waited until I got the results of the scan, and if I received the all clear, then I would never have to talk about it. It’s disconcerting for any son to talk to their parents about anything to do with their groins, despite the open-mindedness of either party. Yet the lowest point was still to come.
On the day of the examination, I was sent to a small cubicle to undress and put of one of those hospital robes which feel like a poor-fitting oversized napkin. I had only entered the cubicle when one of the nurses knocked on the door and asked if I was ready. Heck, I had hardly unzipped my jeans yet. It wasn’t like I was throwing my clothes off with gusto, in anticipation of a sexual encounter. No, I was about to enter a room and let a radiographer and his two assistants examine the state of my balls.
Polite introductions were made (imagine: “Hello, I’ll be your radiographer for today, who will be violating and destroying your privacy.” And I know, I shouldn’t be thinking like that, because this man could be helping to save my life). I was made to lie down while an odd green goo was smeared over my scrotum. This was to help the scanner to operate efficiently. The scanner itself was a handheld device, like a supermarket barcode checker. This was run over my testes a number of times, like I was a tin of beans whose price refused to be read. And then I was left in the room, lying there with this glutinous substance running down my leg and wondering where the sink was to clean myself up.
In addition to this tale, I’ll briefly mention my visit to the GUM clinic. A young female doctor was asking me questions about my sexual health (I was all clear), and needed to check me for any lumps. After her examination, she remarkably exclaimed “That’s okay, good, healthy skin” and while she was saying this, I swear, she gave my penis a little pat. It was the oddest compliment I have ever received about my genitals.

Keeping the Good Man Down

Excuse the prolonged absence: having been ex-communicado for quite a while, I find myself once again in a position to write comfortably. You might ask what I’ve been doing with myself in the last few months. I won’t answer that now. Maybe I’ll reveal little glimpses and thoughtful insights over the next few entries.

As much as I hate using clichés, especially to kick off a rejuvenation, there is a saying which is apt to the revival of this blog. You can’t keep a good man down. Sure, you can tether his frame and whip his hide mercilessly, but eventually, the good man gets back up again. He wipes down the blood from his scars, recollects himself, and gets on with whatever it was he was doing beforehand. The good man is prone to sucker-punches; more than that, he’s especially liable to tears of the heart. With wisdom, he knows when to be sensitive and when to be logical, but due to romanticism, sensitivity wins out every time. The good man gets hurt, he carries the burdens of others, and maybe once or twice, he’ll buckle under the strain. The important thing is that he never allows any of this to turn him into a bad man.

During the good fight, bitterness and resentment sneaks it, looking to spoil all the hard work the good man has built up. We all know this. We’ve all been in situations which, while bringing great joy and happiness at the time, turn sour. Someone’s dripping iodine into your bloodstream. It’s a slow disintegration, like how fresh fruit corrodes: a small bruise spreading over the skin until the entire flesh is corrupted. Similarly, we can grow to hate our jobs, curse our loved ones and detest our living arrangements. But not the good man. He stays and fights.

Apparently 1 in 5 people suffer from depression in Britain today. I am, on some days, one of them. However, I refuse to be kept down. I’m reaching up to break the cloud cover, and I’m finding the sunshine in the late summer sky. There will be dancing in the parks, chasing dogs through sprinklers, holding hands with a beautiful friend and lazy picnics. As the autumn comes, we will crunch through leaves, and watch pink sunsets interrupted by dazzling fireworks, sipping our drinks on balconies and porches, shared with glorious, close friends. When winter sets, we will play in the snow, and trade well thought-of presents, toast ourselves by open fires and help decorate each other’s Christmas trees. And then, when spring arrives, we will rejoice in the rebirth of our earth, and watch lambs in the fields, take in the days as they grow longer and get ready to repeat the whole wondrous year again. So won’t you come and join me?