New Dad Wanted - Apply Here...

This afternoon the font of all cycling knowledge John Galloway (@sofaboy) posted this link in his stream, which immediately grasped my attention as a jolly good idea indeed. The idea of a vending machine that would dispense cycle repair essentials (as well as refreshing beverages), an air hose and a work-stand with chained-on tools seemed to be just what I need at work for the odd commuting mishap that crops up. The only thing missing was a pot of Swarfega on the side. Actually there are a lot of us who ride to work at the hospital I work in, it wouldn't just be me looking for change to pick up the odd tube or patch to make the ride home.

As great as this idea seemed there were two immediate drawbacks that came up. One is that there is an excellent independent bike workshop just over the road from where I work that can usually fix most punctures and do other small jobs during the day for a fair price and a packet of Hob Nobs. Now I would just like to point out that I can now change a punctured inner tube and get back on the road again but I work in paediatric intensive care. I wear a white tunic and my hands need to be very clean. So changing a mucky tyre during my lunch break would be tricky if I wanted to look professional in the afternoon. So having a proper work-stand wouldn't really help, even if I pinched a pair of rubber gloves from the ward.

The other problem was pointed out by another tweeter, @bazzargh:

I don't really know how to fix much more than that puncture. As I've pointed out before, near the end of this post, I am dependent on others to diagnose and repair my many bikes. And this is why I think I need a new Dad. I need a Bike Dad, to take me back to my lost childhood and teach me how to work on my bikes, starting with the basics and taking me all the way through to help with my current problem (a broken spoke) and building my ultimate bike - the Dad-Cycle. I'm not blaming my old Dad by the way. My first bike had solid wheels so there was never much to start with when it came to tinkering. Plasticine, papier-mâché and Lego architecture were all covered comprehensively, but not bicycle repair. So where can I find a new Dad?

I tried looking at work once. The problem with my dependence on the bike workshop was that they just weren't there for me on a sunny Bank Holiday Monday a few years ago. Luckily the puncture I sustained was within 100 yards so I wasn't late for work.And I was on an early shift so after 3:30 I had the time to make the repair. I even had an inner tube and a set of tyre levers in my bag. What I didn't have was a clue. I brought the bike up to the coffee room to sit and look pathetic until someone took pity on me. The first challenge: how the blooming' heck do you get a wheel out of a derailleur gear? To the rescue came our senior cardiac surgeon, just finished from an emergency case. I winced as he put his valuable fingers in the mechanism then simply knocked the wheel out for me. So now I had a flat tyre and still no clue. Enter consultant paediatric intensivist and a senior staff nurse to show me how to change an inner tube. That was their break time used up so I was left with a fixed wheel and the mystery of winding it back into the chain. Hoorah for Sister! Keen to get me and my bike out of her coffee room she popped the wheel back in for me. This is probably the most expensive puncture repair ever. Not that it cost me a penny, think about how much these professional cost the NHS on a bank holiday! That's your taxes folks.

The important thing is that I watched as they taught me. The kind doctors and nurses who gave me their time didn't just do the job for me, they taught me so I could do it myself in the future. Unfortunately they're all to busy to adopt me and take on the role of Bike Dad. Is there anyone else who fancies the job?

Proportional Representation: a recipe for divorce

In all the recent debate about the hung parliament we find ourselves with (following the failure of any political party in the UK to demonstrate that they aren't a bunch of sleazy, self-serving, career expense claimers) there has been much discussion about the subject of electoral reform, particularly Proportional Representation.

As a nurse I'm used to using abrieviations and I have a problem with refering to Proportional Representation as PR. If I'm asked to administer something PR it means it's time to don the greasy glove as it is to be given per rectum. So unless we're imagining the conversation where one Prime Ministerial hopeful says to his potential ally that he can shove electoral reform up his arse, I don't think I'll be able to shorten the phrase.

So in these confusing times my wife turns to me for an explanation of just what the Hell is going on, what does it all mean and how is it my fault and what do I propose to do about it? Is is pretty much her standard reaction to anything that's gone wrong; a natural assumption that it's all my fault. In most cases she's probably right. I do like to mess around with power tools, I do tend to speak without letting my brain have even the slightest editorial control and I have, on numerous occasions, managed to locate and consume the last of the chocolate in the house and only reveal this fact when there is no way of replacing it. But to blame me for a hung parliament is stretching things a bit too far. I voted. She voted. We practiced democracy to the best of our abilities. I can't see how I can be made to take the blame for this. What I can do is try to explain what all this means. Picture, if you dare, the scene - Mr. & Mrs. Martasaurus are lying in bed and the talk inevitably turns to politics. We discuss Proportional Representation. Enter the metaphor:

"Parliament is like the duvet and we are the electorate, snuggled safely under it's protective warmth/smothering control. In the current system we each have a vote on contol of the duvet. One sleeper, one vote. This results in us each having half of the duvet." Fair enough, but is it proportional to how we voted? At a massive sixteen stone I weigh more than twice the petite Mrs. Martasaurus. In terms of mass I should have more votes over the use of the duvet. I vote, as two-thirds of the duvet users, and pull a coresponding amount of the covers to my side of the bed. As the minority group Mrs. Martasaurus takes offence and tries to pull the duvet back. But I have, if not right, then certainly 16 stone of might on my side. I am not moved.

Is that an accurate metaphor for how Proportional Representation would work? Not at all. But it did succeed in making my wife very cross with me and therefore distracted her from the fact that I have no idea what I'm talking about the majority of the time.

-- Post From my iPhone

Never mix drink, drugs and metaphors

I haven't writen a book review since I was at school & tried to convince my teacher that 'The Very Hungry Caterpiller' was the finest thing ever written. This may in some way account for my disappointing GCSE results, I was supposed to be writing about 'Lucky Jim' - a book of, in my opinion, no literatory achievement whatsoever. It didn't even have pictures, let alone holes in every page.

Anyway, I've just finished reading an autobiography that happily took me back to around that time and I'm not going to review it, just critisise one paragraph. The book was 'Bit of a Blur' by Alex James. This interested me because Mr. James is an amazingly diverse man. He fully embraced the lifestyle opportunities that being the bass player in a band like Blur offered him, sex 'n' drugs 'n' rock 'n' roll, but he also went in some strange directions too. He spends a fair amount of his time now as a farmer and often reports on Radio 4 countryside programs, where I get to listen to him thanks to my prematurely middle-aged tastes. But during his band years Alex became profoundly interested in astronomy and managed to become deeply involved in the Beagle 2 mission to send the Open University to Mars (presumably because the barren red desolation was better than Milton Keynes to visit as a rover could travel for several hundred yards without encountering a roundabout.)

If you don't remember Beagle 2 you may be forgiven as it was a strange part of Britain's space program, it achieved more in terms of public interest and publicity than it did scientifically and resulted in the biggest disappointment on Christmas Day since I discovered that nurses have to look after sick people 365 days of the year and that an NHS Christmas Dinner was never going to compensate for this. My worry, having read this book, is how much involvement did Alex James have in the planning of the mission? Forget the fact that it acually took Beagle 2 just over six months to reach Mars, it's the mixed metaphor in the last line that concerns me.

"Three hundred years ago it took three months to get to Australia. Now it only takes three months to get to Mars. Soon we will go to other planets. Not because space is a place of infinate resources, but because it's in man's nature to explore. New horizons are exhilarating. Space is the new ocean and spaceships are the new cathedrals."

This might explain why Beagle 2 disappeared, presumably crashing, as it plummeted cathedral-like towards the surface of Mars. But you would have thought that the wreckage would be easier to find, the Martian desert now strewn with stained glass and flying buttresses.

-- Post From my iPhone

Meanwhile, back at the blog...

So much for trying to write regularly. The last time I poured my brain out into my keyboard was June. I could apologise but I'm pretty sure no-one actually cares. So I'm sure the only fireworks that will greet this entry will be entirely coincidental and seasonal and not grateful public appreciation that I have once again shared my thoughts with the world.

Anyway, the point of today's blog is not to conclude my positively serious stuff on pain (I will commit Part 2 to the screen one day, I promise) but to relay an overheard comment at work. As well as teaching the oh-so-important subject of manual handling I am still occasionally a clinical nurse. Last week I got into a discussion on the most suitable pain-killer to give to a young patient, the best route and how effective it would be. When a qualified paediatric nurse says, with a perfectly straight face, "I could give her a suppository but it'll take some time to kick-in" then you know it's time to explain the finer points of drug administration.

Pain! Huh! What is it good for?

Pain is a pretty much universal human experience. Sure, some people have extraordinarily high thresholds to expressing their pain (not all of them are women) and some can't tolerate the slightest painful stimulus without their brain's throwing a major wobbler. That's biology for you, it does so enjoy making everybody so delightfully different and individual. But however we experience it we do all have that in common...we all experience pain. The problem is that we all do it differently.

The subjective nature of pain is one of the things that can make nursing a very frustrating occupation at times. As a student (first time round, when I was practicing on adults) I learned this annoying little phrase. I don't intend to reference my blogs regularly, that sort of thing is best left to academic essays where I need proof rather than being able to rely on my own, not-so-humble opinion (if it was humble I'd write this down and hide it somewhere, not indulge in the vanity publishing medium of the 21st Century - blogging.) Anyway, here's the quote, the reference is down the bottom of the page if you're interested..."Pain is what the patient says it is, and exists whenever the patient says it does" (McCaffrey, 1972). This is a neat, trite way of summing up the awkward nature of pain, of saying that pain really is a bugger to assess. You've got two patients - one is howling in pain from what will turn out to be a slightly twisted ankle. In the next bed someone is stoically trying to go for a bracing hike on a leg that has more bends than it's comfortable to even look at without making eyes water (I once took a call from an evil git of a triage nurse who wanted to let me know that he was sending me a patient who had "something wrong with the joint between his ankle and his knee." He wasn't joking.) It can be very difficult not to try to compare the two of them. Pain is personal, pain is individual and pain is very hard to empathise with. We have to rely on the only person who's opinion counts. We have to believe the patient. But we have to ask the patient to explain it in a measurable, understandable way that we can document and compare with next time.

As nurses we use some truly simple tools to try to assess a patients pain. My favourite is the Numerical Pain Score. Apply thus: ask the patient to score their pain from zero to ten, where zero is no pain and ten is the worst pain imaginable. Now to me that seems like a real insult to the complexities of the human nervous system, the emotional overlays that can effect how an individual perceives their own pain on different days of the week, or even whether the nurse was smiling when they asked the question. How can a number describe an ache, cramp, discomfort, hurt, irritation, pang, smart, soreness, spasm, sting, tenderness or a twinge? What about anguish, distress, suffering, torment, torture, unhappiness or woe? Yes, all taken from my pocket thesaurus. There is no number that can adequately describe the combinations of the above that could accompany everything from a stubbed toe to child birth. It's crude, but really it's all we've got. Could we use colour? Spikes versus bubbles? I don't know, but better nurses than me have been working on it for longer than I've been alive.

If you think it's difficult to gauge the pain of a competent adult, imagine the difficulty in assessing the pain of an infant or child. A baby can cry for so many reasons, how are we meant to know when it's in pain? Well, once again it's out with the pain tools. That little row of round-headed chaps at the top of the page were devised by children's nurses, Wong and Baker (Hockenberry, 2006). Is the nurse meant to ask the child which one describes their pain? Or hold the pictures up like a pain swatch to compare them to the anguished infant in front of them? Look at the little face on the right. Does it say 'hurts most', 'agonising pain, the worst you can imagine' to you? Or does it say sad? Is that the face of a child in pain or a child who's mother has just popped out for a cup of tea and now strange nurses are waving stupid pictures at me and I REALLY WANT MY MUM BACK NOW!!! As I said, it's very frustrating, sometimes impossible to get it right.

There could very well be an argument for treating the patient's pain with everything we can throw at it, to make sure no patient is ever in pain. That would surely be the ethical approach, the one we're encouraged to adopt as nurses. It's cruel to leave a patient, a person, in pain. Okay, that's not quite true, we use pain and sometimes even deliberately inflict it upon those in our care. Knock yourself out and you may very well show your first signs of consciousness when one of my kindly medical or nursing colleagues grinds their knuckles into your chest, presses on your eye socket, or (and I swear I only had to do this once on a particularly stubborn faker) rubs up and down your hairy leg wearing rubber gloves. Pain is part of such a primitive survival mechanism that it can stimulate a response when the brain has stopped taking calls from even familiar voices or that Bananarama record you told your Mum to play if ever you were in a coma (never underestimate what a Mum will remember). So maybe us blasting away all the pain is not always a good idea.

Pain actually has a number of useful roles to play in our survival. It's pain that protects us from external harm, makes us pull away from the hot hob before it burns us. Pain reduces the amount of activity we can do while our bodies try to heal an injury, preventing us from causing further damage. And pain helps to prevent us repeating mistakes by getting itself tangled up in that murky mess of memory. Yep, pain can be good. I may talk about that some more next time I sit down to write this.

References

• Hockenberry, M.J. & Wilson, D. (2006). Wong's Nursing Care of Infants and Children. 8th Edition. Mosby. Philadelphia.


• McCaffrey, M. (1972). Nursing management of the patient with pain. J.B. Lippincott. Philadelphia.

Nearly an armful of stuff about blood donation

Today, Sunday 14th June 2009, is World Blood Donor Day so as a topical celebration I invite you all to break open the Teatime Assortment and raise a cup of NHS tea to the approximately 1.6 million British donors, all aged between 17 and 65 who each gave 2-3 times last year to help maintain the UK blood stock. While I think this is an amazing figure the National Blood Service point out that this is just 4% of the UK population. The reason that I think that 1.6 million people giving a not-inconsiderable percentage of their own blood to total strangers in an amazing thing is that for the vast majority of those people the donation is an act of faith. You can read all the leaflets and posters, listen to the celebrity anecdotes and the adverts, but most donors will never get to see where their blood goes, how the NHS uses it.

Most people inherit beliefs, morals and ideals from their parents, making a conscious choice at some point whether they will live by those convictions as they grow up. We get raised a certain way, surrounded by people with common beliefs and at some stage they involve a degree of faith, believing without any proof or evidence. Among the many good things I learned from my parents was that they gave blood. When I was old enough I occasionally accompanied one or other of them to donation sessions and when I turned seventeen I registered and made my first donation, because I wanted to. I always knew vaguely where my blood was going and thus why it was necessary, but I was curious to know why I had decided to give it. So a few years ago I asked my parents why they had always done this thing, that only 1,599,998 (*) other people did in this country. Neither was able to give me a satisfactory answer, it was almost put down as that most frustrating of parental reasons, "just because." There had been no trauma in their past, no history of critical illness or incident in the family that had first raised the issue in their minds; they just did it because they did. The closest thing to a reason I got was from my Dad, who suggested that the fact that many years ago in London his donation was swapped for a half-pint of Guinness may have had something to do with it - a reasonable incentive, but not enough to really justify the cumulative time spent being interrogated, tested, exsanguinated and then resting three times a year.

Where are they now? My Mum stopped giving blood a few years ago when it was pointed out by her skydiving instructors that not having the full quota of the red stuff was pretty much incompatible with the sport of getting into an aeroplane, waiting until it got to the slightly oxygen depleted altitude of 15,000 feet and then having your wits about her as she threw herself out to spend a minute in free fall then land safely. She gave up giving blood only for the love of a sport she excelled at. My Dad is still churning the stuff out, getting close to 100 donations! That's a lot of biscuits and I am very proud.

The rewards for blood donation in the UK are maybe not obvious. The NHS doesn't pay for blood as many countries do, every drop of blood used is donated by volunteers. The only material rewards would seem to be access to a range of car-stickers (bumper-stickers) with weak puns, and a lot of tea and biscuits. The donor does receive the genuine appreciation and support of the nursing staff, and there is also a warm, fuzzy feeling inside...but that could just be down to the loss of blood so shouldn't really be trusted. The typical blood donor doesn't even get the satisfaction of knowing where their blood goes, what good it does, how it has saved or enhanced a patient's life. And that is why I consider the donation of blood an act of faith, and a more precious gift because of that.

For many years I have been known as Staff Nurse Martasaurus. I have worked in a wide variety of clinical settings, oncology, emergency and trauma nursing, intensive care, and for the last eight years in paediatric intensive care seeing children who have had cancers, heart surgery, traumas, burns and much much more. Giving blood and the components that make up blood is a serious, but almost routine, part of the care of lots of the patients I have nursed over the years. I have seen the beneficial effects of a transfusion on my patients, seen the colour return to the pale and anaemic, watched a child require less breathing support because the increased red cells are able to carry more oxygen around and I have nursed patients who were kept alive by the almost continuous replacement of lost blood until they were stable enough to receive the definitive treatment that saved their lives. Blood really is amazing stuff and the scientists and doctors who have spent years learning about it and perfecting the process of transfusion are true heroes. I have even done something that very few blood donors have done...I have hung a bag of my own blood up on a patient (I've never told them, just enjoyed knowing that the bag of B+ had a provenience that was interesting to me.)

This does mean that in some way I have lost my faith. I still believe in blood donation, but I have seen the proof of it working. Trust me, it's worth it and I will carry on doing it for as long as I can. But faith is wonderful. As that great Healer said, "Do you believe because you see me? How happy are those who believe without seeing me!" (John 20:29) Isn't it amazing that those 1,599,999 (*) other people continue to donate their blood to strangers without ever seeing that end result? So lift that weak tea high, toast these heroes today. And help yourself to another biscuit, go on.

* Approximate figures used for comic effect.

My first bike - my last bike

I’ve just had my bike serviced, well one of them. I have been told (by a real professor no less) that the scientific formula to describe the number of bicycles needed by an individual is n+1, where n represents the number of bikes currently owned. I have two at present; I know what my next bike will be and why I need it. Of these two I do have a favourite and I believe that it will remain my favourite, even when I have justified owning a whole garage of bikes.

Looking at some of my previous entries I can see that rather than being a current diary it’s more of a retrospective autobiography. Perhaps it’s because of that whole ‘you can’t move forward without looking back’ thing, but I think it’s probably just because I’m getting old (listening to ‘The Archers’ apparently means that I’m old according to my younger brother, evergrowingbrain). So while I’m thinking about my current and future two-wheeled transport I can’t help but experience the hauntings of the ghosts of cycles past. I won’t list them all; there are two bikes that have played a significant role in my life.

My first bike was great. It was small (because I was) and red and had stabilisers/training wheels. My ownership of this bike coincided with what I remember as my first favourite television programme, ‘CHiPs’...the everyday tale of California Highway Patrol folks. Cool guys on big fast motorbikes, fighting crime, wearing sunglasses and, did I mention this, being very cool. So naturally that is what my little bike did for me in my mind, I felt cool. I’d hurtle around as fast my legs would propel me, never crossing the road and imagining that I was chasing wrong-doers at high speed, and hearing not the faint clicking of a pushbike in motion but the roar of an engine, a big engine. I don’t recall ever getting the sunglasses but that didn’t really matter, if I closed my eyes I was wearing them anyway – while riding my bike as fast as I could, I wasn’t the brightest of kids. It’s important that I thought I was cool because to the outside world I was a strange blond-haired five year-old, hunched over the handlebars of a small red bike that still had stabilisers attached, patrolling the pavements of my permitted patch in a repetitive circuit. I don’t think trying to sing the ‘CHiPs’ theme music as I went helped really.

This should have been a safe way to spend my time. No, I didn’t wear a helmet (no-one did) but it wouldn’t have made a difference in what turned out to be the worst accident so far in my cycling career. It was those stabilisers that did it. Having not yet learned those skills required to balance on two wheels I was dependent on those stabilisers to give me that upright position that was so necessary for my perception of coolness. So when I came across a change in the camber of the pavement I toppled over. I landed on my outstretched left arm and my anguished wails reached the ears of...my dentist! He came out, picked me up and, with all the skill of a dentist, failed to diagnose a fracture of the humerus (that’s the top arm bone) and sent me on my way. I made it home, dragging my bike along and even managed to get it into the garden with the gate closed behind me...to the shock and, I like to think, secret approval of Mama Martasaurus (who had long tried to instill a sense of responsibility in me, including not leaving my bike out on the mean streets of Salisbury.) It was off to Casualty (briefly called Accident and Emergency, now commonly known as the Emergency Department. It’s just another example of me aging) for me for an X-ray and a confirmation of the break. This was by far the worst, but not the only, injury I sustained on any of my bikes. Actually I’m pretty sure very few cyclists hurt themselves on their bikes, it’s usually on the ground next to the bike, or at least a few yards away from it.

It’s been a while since I diverted off on a tangent, so here I go, off for a little wander...not so much a tangent as a postscript to that adventure. Nearly thirty years on I still carry the evidence of that fall. I have seen enough American Football movies to be aware that “Chicks dig scars”, but so far I have yet to meet a girl who has been impressed by my ability to bend my left elbow outwards at a slightly unpleasant angle. If I then rotate my arm I can usually get a response of nausea with accompanying shrieks of disgust. This was not the result of the initial trauma, or malpractice or incompetence on behalf of Salisbury’s doctors and nurses, unless Medical Exasperation can be blamed. No, the shape of my arm can be attributed to nothing but my childish need to suck my thumb. Not adaptable enough to transfer my allegiance form my left thumb to my right, I insisted on trying to suck my favourite. This isn’t easy when you have your elbow plastered at a 90 degree angle, try it. But I couldn’t be faulted on my perseverance, I broke the plaster cast. I broke the next one too, and that’s when the medical profession conceded the hopelessness of the situation and put my arm into just a fabric sling. Perhaps my first encounter with the NHS, and it left me maimed.

That first bike represented an early taste of independence for the young Martasaurus, and what I learned from it was that pain and discomfort could come from misusing that independence. I did eventually learn to ride my bike properly, but I have noticed that stabilisers are no longer the trend for that first bike. Perhaps the rest of the world learned more from me than I did from it.

My next bike of note is my current ride. It’s big, it’s black and frankly it lacks glamour or any coolness. But Martasaurus rex is older and wiser now and can appreciate utilitarian design, function and, most of all, comfort. This is the bike that will be with me for the rest of my riding life. And then I will have a grand Viking funeral, when me and my bike are cast off in a long boat, set on fire and drift off into the sunset to the sounds of the weeping crowds singing, “Do-do doooo, do-do doooo. Do-do do-do do-do do do do do!”

This bike plays an important role in my life. It’s my principle transport for commuting. It helps me feel green about my travel, and virtuous (and not a little smug) as I pass static car drivers at rush hour. I think it’s helping to keep me fit and contributing to my ongoing weight loss. And it gives me that sense of independence – that I can just get on my bike and go, no matter what the weather, or whether I can afford fuel or not. But every time I get on this bike I am reminded that mainly my affection for this bike is mainly a sentimental one and that can be traced to one man, my Stepfather. I’ve struggled to come up with a suitable dinosaur name to go with the theme of this blog. Then I had a flash of inspiration, so now he is Paterodactyl – light-weight and likes to fly.

This bike I ride today is about 10 years old, a graduation present when I first became a nurse. I was moving to a new city to start my first job, living in a flat between hospitals on opposite sides of the city and parking was going to be a nightmare. So I identified that I needed a new bike. It was Paterodactyl who found what sort of bike I should get, and as he was paying for it I was more than happy to agree with his recommendation. My problem was that at that time there were only two real choices for a grown-up bicycle (i.e. one that didn’t have a basket), the ‘racer’, now known as a road bike (narrow tyres, drop handlebars razor blade saddle) or the chunky mountain bike. I had had a road bike before, but experience of constantly having punctures fixed caused by thorns in country lanes made me reluctant to try another road bike on the glass-strewn streets of Southampton. The knobbly tyres of the mountain bike would have made it the logical choice, were it not for the fact that it just wasn’t comfortable – too short in the frame for my long body. This is where Paterodactyl came up trumps. Trek had just introduced the hybrid bike, lighter in weight than a mountain bike, tougher and more robust in the tyres than a road bike...and more expensive than either at that time. But as it was the right choice he bought it for me. And ten years on it’s going strong, as good as it ever was.

This most recent service was prompted by me destroying two pairs of iPod earphones (trod on one pair, dropped the other down the toilet). Deprived of music (okay, ‘The Archers’ podcast) on my commute I was forced to listen to the clonking noise coming from the mechanism of my bike. I worked out from my limited knowledge of bike workings that it was a problem with the bottom bracket – and that it had probably been going on for a while. It needed replacing so I took it to my favourite bike shop that did the job, along with a few other tweaks, and rejuvenated my trusty bike.

I told my Mum about this and she pointed out that this was yet another component replaced since I’ve owned the bike. She asked if my bike was turning into Trigger’s Broom. So I did a count up. In ten years I have replaced the handlebars, seat post, saddle, luggage rack, tyres, brakes, brake levers and the gear shifters. And now the bottom bracket too. I’ve been warned that I’ll probably have to change the chain ring, sprockets and the chain itself soon as they’re getting worn too. So will it then still be my original bike? I think so. The frame, the heart of the machine, is still going strong and that’s the bit I love most. It’s what makes my bike the right bike for me. It’s the size, shape and construction that makes my bike the one that’ll last me for years more. Yes the peripheral bits will wear out and need updating, but that strong frame will hopefully keep going for as long as I am able to ride it, ensuring that it will be the same bike, even when every other component has been replaced.

A Correction

In my last rambling I confidently stated that the technology invented by Hollywood in big budget blockbuster movies always becomes cheaper and more accessible so that it eventually makes it's way into the more commonly seen (almost disposable) media...advertising. I have this evening realised that there is a significant exception to this theory.

I've always been a fan of Transformers, ever since I was younger (my Blogging avatar is a Transformer, Grimlock, a robot who seemed to find it necessary to mimic a dinosaur in order to blend in..?) and I love the live-action film that came out a couple of years ago. I'm watching it now and while watching a helicopter turn into I giant killing robot I've realised that, with a sequel due out later this year, this movie franchise has been based on technology pioneered by a car advert. Yep, boring French automobile manufacturer Citroën started the ball rolling by making their cars transform in their adverts. There may well have been trade description issues to answer for when disappointed customers returned their dull, functional and remarkably non-transformable vehicles to the showroom, but the adverts were truly spectacular; you can see them here.

I'm not going to let this realisation spoil my enjoyment of this movie tonight. So what if the advert came first. Hollywood have taken it and refined it and done something that Citroën never thought of...put Megan Fox inside the car. If they had I might be driving one today, whether there was more than meets the eye or not.

Martyn and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs (Part 2)

It's not everyday that a chap realises that he's invented a new branch of science - Paediatric Psychopaleontology, the study of what children think of dinosaurs. Now as I write this there is a little orange button sitting below my text box reading 'PUBLISH POST'. Now supposing that means that this is a published scientific thesis, could I now call myself Professor Martasaurus rex? Perhaps not in public, but maybe quietly - when talking to myself.

So where was I? Ah yes, why children like dinosaurs. I think I made a pretty good case but (like Darwin's evolution thing and Einstein and his relativity guff) this is just a theory. I have no proof, nothing that could even hint at a Nobel nomination - a real pity, I could use the cash. So I just want to ask nicely that should any freelance scientific investors happen upon this I'd be more than happy to do some real work to further the knowledge of mankind.

Anyway, today I am going to take my theory and look at what some people are doing to deliberately use the knowledge that children and dinosaurs would get on like a house on fire (complete with the screaming and the need to get the emergency services involved) if they were to coexist, and how they are perverting this to do great harm. There may be paranoia ahead, or I might have stumbled across an international plot to destroy childhood itself! Actually, ignore that last bit - I think I might sound like a Disney movie, let's just go with the paranoia. I feel less mad that way.

I think Hollywood, in it's search for money from every conceivable demographic, made a big mistake in making the 'Jurassic Park' movies. Sure, they made a lot of money from parents taking their offspring to see them because, "Kids love dinosaurs, yeah?" But did they ever stop to think about the damage they were causing? Of course not. So what did Messers. Crichton, Spielberg, and their associates do to earn this criticism from me? They made dinosaurs 'real' again. Advances in computer graphics meant that dinosaurs on film could be rendered so realistically and in such a way that they could appear to physically interact with the actors (not that the actors were actually that well animated themselves.) This had been tried before, but the classic 'Godzilla' had always been a man in a rubber suit and as great as the stop-motion work of Ray Harryhausen was (check out 'The Valley of Gwangi'), no-one was really fooled, were they? But suddenly here was the technology that not only made the dinosaurs look real but put them into the 20th Century...that's real and here.

Tangent time again: Have you ever noticed how the pioneering techniques that were used to make 'Jurassic Park' got cheaper over the years? This led to a change in the use of the creatures they created...the Tyrranosaurus rex that reigned the screen under the inept supervision of Richard Attenborough found herself in much reduced circumstances, forced to work for the BBC in the documentary series 'Walking With Dinosaurs'. And if that wasn't enough of an indignity, check her out in the Volvic mineral water advert (NOT the one with Tyrranosaurus Alan). Same technology, but used successively for big-money entertainment, educational programming and to sell bottled water. I'm amazed it hasn't arrived on my desktop yet, a little program in the Microsoft Office suite. Microsoft Carnivore? Do you really want your files to be eaten Y/N?

So after all these years of children liking dinosaurs because they were good 'n' scary, but safely extinct, here they were apparently resurrected and prowling the streets of San Diego. I wonder how many children started having nightmares about dinosaurs after seeing this (especially that moment where the empty dog kennel fell from the Tyrranosaurus's mouth. Cool), or simply got put off dinosaurs by the fact that it was no longer an act of faith to believe in them, here was 'proof' of their incarnation on Earth? I believe that Hollywood got it wrong here and that dinosaurs should have remained in the realms of gone, but not forgotten.

According to proper scientists Michael Crichton's fictional theories are a long way from becoming reality (http://www.sdnhm.org/research/paleontology/jp_qanda.html). But what if it could happen? What if dinosaurs could be brought back into the world? My Aunt and Uncle gave me a book for Christmas last year, "How To Keep Dinosaurs". Among the tips for choosing, training and housing your dinosaur there is a fair amount to be learned about feeding your new prehistoric pal. Now as any child will tell you there are two groups or dinosaurs - herbivores and carnivores. Herbivores eat plants, carnivores eat herbivores. Kids don't seem to mind this but I'm not sure how well it will go down with modern sensibilities about a) feeding the growing human population of planet Earth (let alone a bunch of free-loading dinosaurs) and b) breeding creatures specifically to be eaten by other reintroduced creatures which just happen to be higher up the food chain. So when the superpredators of the past are once again stomping around looking for a meal, what are we going to feed them?

Enter Purple Enemy Number 1...Barney. I hate Barney. I hate the insipid, simpering American children who collude with Barney, cavorting around with Barney in his (insert an edited expletive made up of the symbols you get by pressing SHIFT + the top row of the keyboard) series of unrealistic and irksomely cheerful and wholesome adventures. I hate the whole sordid conspiracy that has resulted in Barney's presence on millions of TV screens, in toy shops and in video stores worldwide.

What is Barney. Okay, this is pretty much conjecture on my part but here are my observations. He is a bipedal dinosaur with small forearms, a large head (NOT used for thinking) and big white pointy teeth. If we compare this Photofit with the commonly known dinosaurs I think he's meant to be...a Tyrannosaurus rex. A carnivore. A predator, a big dinosaur which would reasonably have a big appetite. So why is Barney shown prancing around and playing with the children when in nature they would just be food? It's because Barney and the children are part of a larger conspiracy.

Imagine the scientists working away on dinosaur DNA. They manage to recreate Tyrannosaurus rex and then have to spend the rest of their research grant buying cows and sheep to keep up with it's ravenous appetite. In the true style of many owners of unwanted exotic, overlarge pet reptiles eating them out of house and home ("He used to be so cute when he was little, but now he tries to eat us and he's too big for the bathtub!") they release it into the wild (well, it's too big to flush down the toilet to live with the sewer alligators). There would be complaints when the picked-clean remnants of expensive livestock start appearing in farmer's fields, so a new source of food needs to be available...children. I know, it's all so Roald Dahl, but go with it. Thanks to 'Jurassic Park' children will now fear dinosaurs instead of enjoying a healthy respect and ghoulish admiration for them as they always used to. But if they could be brainwashed , practically from birth, by the all singin', all dancin' Big Friendly dinosaur then what will they do when a wild Tyrannosaurus rex comes stalking down the (mysteriously cat, dog and homeless people-free) road? "Barney!" they'll shout, running out into the street to play and hug and dance and sing. And who be to blame as the weeping parents seek justice? The dinosaur, acting as nature meant it to (just 150,000,000 years too late)? The parents themselves for not seeing the danger of using this purple killer as a babysitter? Or Barney, taking the fear out of superpredators, just when it was needed most?

Martyn and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs (Part 1)

One of my earliest memories comes from a trip to London as a small child. If you've ever visited the Natural History Museum then you can't miss what is, for me anyway, the star attraction...the complete skeleton of a Diplodocus (and I do mean star, check out Disney's 'One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing' - that's the one I'm talking about.) It stands in the main hall as you enter the museum and I have visited it countless times in my life, as a toddler with my Dad, on school trips and now that I am an alleged grown-up I still pop in whenever I can.

Now, unlike many other objects and memories from my childhood I think that the Diplodocus is unique in the simple fact that it's magnificence has in no way diminished as so many other objects and memories have over many years. Of course I've grown (sometimes in several directions at the same time) so that the coat hook I once had to reach up to to hang my parka on at school is now probably at navel height (and Wagon Wheels are no longer the size of a dinner plate.) But I am thrilled on every visit to the Natural History Museum that the Diplodocus remains simply massive. It's head towers above mine the legs are each taller than I am and it's neck and tail stretch off in long, graceful curves. I was awed as a child and that feeling has never left me. This sight is firmly lodged in my memory as on of those "Wow!" moments.

I know I am not alone in my appreciation of this spectacle. How many children have entered the building to be confronted by the Diplodocus? Thousands? Millions? For many it may be that spark that becomes a love for knowledge, even if it is a very specialised kind of knowledge. Last year I visited my cousin and her family. While being nice Uncle Martasaurus I sat on the floor with a Magna Doodle and drew pictures of dinosaurs for her four year-old son. Whatever I drew, he named. Tyrannosaurus rex, Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Pteranodons and, of course, Diplodocus. At four. I know children who can pick a Parasauralophus out in a line-up - and tell me where it lived, what it ate and, with ghoulish glee, what ate it. Some kids are just sponges for dinosaur facts, absorbing all they can find and regurgitating them with terrifying accuracy. Dinosaurs are part of childhood, have you ever wondered why?

Here's my theory. Kids like monsters. They like to be scared of monsters. Okay, some children take this to the extreme of having nightmares, wetting the bed (a well known biological warfare tactic against monsters hiding underneath) and ending up as very disturbed adults who don't go to the Natural History Museum. But lots of children do find monsters fascinating. Look at the Gruffalo for example. Lots of children enjoy monsters in books and toys and to be frank the more ghastly, slimy and unpleasant the monster is the more children will want to know more. But then even the sanest child starts to have doubts. Perhaps it's just one bad dream, a request to leave the light on at night or just a desire to avoid the monster book for a while, but pretty soon most children start to worry that the monsters might be real...and nearby.

Now the great thing about dinosaurs is that everyone knows that dinosaurs just ain't around anymore. They died out millions of years ago. That's before even Grandma was born! That makes them pretty safe. So here you've got a monster, and there's no denying that dinosaurs count as monsters, that you can see evidence of today. That makes them pretty real. But instead of being scary it renders them fascinating. A monster you can embrace (metaphorically) and that can never lurk under your bed due to that whole extinction thing. They might as well be child-magnets. This is the important role that the dinosaur has in childhood. They bridge a gap between the fantasy and the real and they do it in a safe way. I've never met a child yet who had a dinosaur nightmare, not even from a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Procrastination over...a 'short' entry about the Marmite Test

After my initial flurry of blogging activity (two entries in 24 hours...then nothing) I have received comments from my two readers that I need to write more. The problem is that while I have many profound ideas for Wilde-like jottings of such genius that Stephen Fry would be contacted by my lawyers to gently remind him that plagiarism is just not the done thing, I have trouble sitting down to write an entry of a decent length. If I can't write at least a thousand words then it doesn't seem worth it so I end up writing nothing, sharing nothing of my wit with my loyal and devoted pair of readers. So I have decided to dispense with the 'blessay' format and just pour the contents of my mind out to see what happens. If you don't like it (or Marmite) then tough. It's my blog, I make the rules.

Today I am going to share with you the test by which I judge others. Not everyone, it doesn't work on everyone, just those people I come into contact with in the field of sandwich production...The Marmite Test (due to my love of this yeasty spread I have decided to honour it by typing the name in a warm, brown, bold font).

Today I went to my favourite sandwich shop by my workplace to get, strangely enough, a sandwich. I'm not sponsored but I'm going to name them anyway, it's Zuccharo on Upper Maudlin Street. It's small, independent and has a very friendly staff with some truly amazing hair, tattoos and piercings (with no blue plasters covering them, it's really not offensive or unhygienic, don't make me have to look at a pretty girl with a blue plaster drawing my attention from the important thing...she's making me food!) The shop has a blackboard filled with sandwich fillings, panininis etc and, although I'm not that regular they know my favourite sandwich and offer it to me with a smile. So anytime I feel the need to fill my lunch break with a crayfish and sweet chili sauce with salad on brown bread I know where to go.

Okay, new paragraph, new subject. Well, a bit of a tangent. I'll get back to the point, but you'll just have to ride it out while I digress. I like Christmas Dinner. During my childhood I had Christmas Dinner (one, sometimes more, times a year) in a variety of family homes and I have never had a bad Christmas Dinner. The best is obvious, my Mum's. Grandmothers, Aunts, friends and even I myself have cooked Christmas Dinner and they have all been great. I like the food, the company, the atmosphere, just about everything about the meal. But despite the turkey, sausages-in-bacon, stuffing (sorry Mum, but I've got a friend who makes the best stuffing), roast potatoes, sprouts (ooh, I do like sprouts) and the rest of the food, the puddings and, now that I'm a grown up, the wine, I find myself agreeing with my Dad, Mr. Martasaurus Senior. Every Christmas Day at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, without fail, he'll announce that what he really fancies is a Marmite sandwich. After all of the rich foods, only eaten once a year, he suddenly gets this craving for a Marmite sandwich. The good thing about this urge is that it's easy to satisfy. If you are a Marmite fan then you'll probably have it in the house. Bread? Yep, it's one of those staples that everyone has in, even on Christmas Day. Put the two together and voilà, a Marmite sandwich. I never really understood this, not when there was leftovers to pick at, turkey sandwiches, trifle, mince pies etc. But now I know where he was coming from.

Now it doesn't take too much imagination to guess what The Marmite Test is. I went into the sandwich shop today in a short break from writing a report. I was stressed, I was hungry and I needed comfort food. I scanned the blackboard while I waited and I didn't find what I wanted. So I asked. Did they have any Marmite? It wasn't listed on the menu, there was no brown and yellow jar nestled among the sauces and spreads to hint that it might be available to that special discerning customer, but what did I have to lose? Okay, what I had to lose was the cool of being known as the eater of a crayfish, sweet chili sauce and salad sandwich. But as delicious as that particular sandwich is, it was not what I wanted then. I took the risk, I asked the question and I was rewarded with...a Marmite sandwich. On white bread. And it was good. It made me feel better, as only real comfort food can, and it reminded me that even though I am in a position to eat whatever sandwich I want, every day if want it, I still have a place in my heart for the simplicity of what I considered to be a boring sandwich when it turned up in my school packed lunch. What I'm trying to say is that even if I could afford to eat Christmas Dinner every day, there would still be a jar of Marmite and a loaf of white bread in the larder.

So there you go. That's the Marmite Test. It hardly qualifies for the capital letter, but it's important to me. Would a Michelin-starred restaurant find a long-forgotten and crusty round the top jar of Marmite for me? If Ramsey vs Reeves in The Case of the Fried Eggs Request is anything to go by then no. But then I wouldn't go to that sort of place for simple food. I now know a bit more about why my father and Vic Reeves aren't really that odd. There's a time and a place for a Marmite sandwich, and today I found a shop able to satisfy my need. With a smile.

My guilty pleasures and paranoias

I bought Lego today. This is an ongoing problem I have, and although I profess shame when confronted with it if I'm really honest I love Lego too much to really have any regret for making it mine. So here I am saying proudly I BOUGHT LEGO TODAY because Mrs. Martasaurus does not read this so I won't get into too much trouble. The set in question might not seem that exciting to you http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Product.aspx?p=7634&cn=553&d=9, a set simply called 'Tractor'. Don't worry, this isn't an in-depth review of the set (number/quality of parts, the shortcomings of stickers over printed bricks and the limitations of the new bricks that just ain't the same as when I was little). This is a paranoid fantasy about how a popular toy manufacturer is reading my mind and why I may have to keep wearing a tin-foil hat if I want to start saving enough money to raise a baby if one turns up.

Family legend tells of how the young Martasaurus was taken to the cinema for the first time in 1977 by his father, who wanted nothing more than an excuse to see Star Wars - and a toddler made a pretty darned good excuse. Okay, tangent time: Mr. Martasaurus Senior worked in London at the time and commuted into the city at very early in the morning and got home again late at night, only seeing me in the dark, asleep and wearing my fuzzy sleep-suit. Weekends were when Dad did see his son awake and I have great memories of the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum, the park, patting a hedgehog (a mistake I made just the once), being bitten by a swan (wow, nature really hated me) and generally doing stuff with him when I was small. So I'm not going to complain about the trip to the cinema that he wanted. Anyway, apparently I was very impressed by the experience. According to Dad I was kept enthralled by the more-or-less constant explosions, laser blasts and spaceships. A different tale is told by my Mum who will tell anyone that when asked if I enjoyed the film I confidently told her that the best bit was that the Big Bad Wolf ate the Three Little Pigs. Even the man who brought us the Ewoks and Jar Jar Binks wouldn't have tried that stunt in his sci-fi movie, this was in fact the Heineken advert that preceded our main feature.

However I reacted at the time I have had about 32 years of love for this film and it's sequels. I do have a passing affection for the prequels, but not to the same extent. Star Wars rocks, kicks ass and is one of my favourite films of all time.

Around this time in my formative years I was introduced to, what would turn out to be, another life-long attachment. A friend of my parents gave me my first Lego set. Basic stuff; bricks, roof tiles, windows, wheels etc. Warning! Tangent approaching! Here it is: Star Trek, the Vulcans have a principle called IDIC. It comes with a badge and everything. It means Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination. That's what old Lego meant to me, possibilities...you could literally try to make anything with it. Over the years I played with other toys (including Star Wars toys) but again family legend says that I always went back to the Lego. It seemed that I now had two loves.

Many (ten) years ago the Lego Corporation launched a satellite from it's HQ in a hollowed out volcano in Denmark specifically to read my thoughts. Those stolen thoughts said, "Hmmm, what if Lego and Star Wars got together and took all of my money?" The evil plastic people, descendants of the Vikings, obviously read this on their super computer and acted to take what money my family had managed to save from the original raids on England in the 9th to the 16th centuries by putting this marketing strategy in place, making beautiful Star Wars models and parting me with my cash. About as hard as stealing candy from a baby. Neatly stacked in my garage, sorted by film, size and general greatness are several large plastic boxes of bricks, wings and R2 units that may be referred to as Exhibit A in the case of Martasaurus vs Lego.

Since my childhood I have developed other interests, but Lego and Star Wars have always been there so I haven't really been cheating on them. I read, ride my bike, vaguely follow some sports, am married and I occasionally do stuff around the house. One of my relatively new interests is in farming. I've been an Archers addict for many years now, I read farming blogs and articles, I listen to podcasts of Farming Today and Wiggly Wigglers (http://www.wigglywigglers.co.uk/) and I consider myself to be a country boy trapped in an urban body. I believe that food production and countryside stewardship are vitally important and I'm very worried about bees. Now here is where my paranoia kicks in. Over the last year or so I have failed to convince myself of the necessity of buying every new Star Wars set that Lego bring out, resulting in gaps in my collection and a happier Mrs. Martasaurus as I spend my money in B&Q instead. This has obviously dented the profits of the Lego Corporation and they have retuned their satellite. In these difficult financial times they need my money. This month the first Lego Farm sets were released. They are great and the reason I bought the little red tractor today is that once again Lego is irresistible to me. How did they know?

If anyone wants me I'm going to change my tin foil hat. The stetson was cool but I think a flat cap may be more me, more farmery. I'm also going to see if I've got the means to purchase the massive Combine Harvester, set number 7636, rrp £29.35. Help me.

By the way, this Blogging thing is new to me, give it a week and my entries will become more sporadic.

First post

Last week I finished re-reading a book that I read a while ago. For all those people who read George Orwell's '1984' (or pretended to) and then started complaining about the surveillance culture in the UK, try reading Ben Elton's 'Blind Faith' and see if you still feel like pouring your every thought, dream and interaction with either the real or virtual world out into the internet.

First time I read it I decided to avoid all social networking online. As all around me invited me to become friends with them on Face Space, My Book, TweetyBird etc I looked on in scorn and prided myself that I was keeping my thoughts private and thus disporting myself with more dignity. Mrs. Martasaurus is on Facebook. At first I sneered, then I got interested and starting checking it more than she did. I read status updates, commented on her friend's photos, and even pretended to be her to change her status reports, priding myself that mine were funnier and got more interest..."ooh look, your friends like me best!"

Really, how sad is that. OMG, I'm the guy who had no friends and needs to be adopted by hers to have any social contact. Well, not really. I have friends. I tend to text or phone and stay in sporadic contact with a small group of close friends and family, I just like some of hers too.

I really enjoyed 'Blind Faith'. For me it really acts as a great counterpoint to '1984' and makes an interesting point about state surveillance of the individual. Does our government realise that it's wasting a fortune on technology when the people seem to be more than happy to do the job for them? "The average citizen in the UK is caught on CCTV cameras 300 times a day" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2071496.stm but sometimes it seems that the average citizen puts themselves on social networking sites, posts photos and video clips of themselves (and each other) drunk and silly, comments on their every thought and emotion (and everyone else's too) and generally takes pride in sacrificing their privacy and dignity. Now I'm sure that with the right software 'the government' can read and watch all of this. Why bother spying on us? We're doing it to ourselves and each other. And now I'm joining in. Please don't bother to point out the irony, I'm typing this wearing my I'M A BIG FAT HYPOCRITE t-shirt. And I'm wearing Crocs, I sold out.