A new hope?

There isn’t a good place to get cancer (I really don’t recommend the head, for instance) but some are better than others.

For a while there, it looked like America was about to become one of the others. Again.

But the good guy won their weirdly complicated election, and although ObamaCare doesn’t really come close to our free-at-the-point-of-need NHS, it’s a step in the right direction, and it’ll be nice when it’s finished. It’s also a progression Mitt Romney had pledged to reverse, despite having introduced something similar in Massachusetts during his tenure as Governor there. Which seems odd, unless you uncharitably see Mitt as a spineless flip-flopper who only won the Republican candidacy over his more extreme (no, really) opponents because he dribbles less and can dress himself, but is nonetheless in thrall to the far right, which thinks ending ObamaCare is the right thing to do.

It’s odd that there are people in the world who think that it’s morally correct to deny people accessible healthcare. Apparently it’s to do with their right to choose. The choice between them paying a little less tax and someone else getting to live, I presume. Yay for civil liberties.

But that’s not a choice to be made for now, because Obama gets to keep the nice Washington mansion for another four years. Which is good: he must have just got the couch in front of the telly worked into his shape. That’s something to strive for, and it’s a terrible thing to deprive a man of his own properly-grooved sofa. Happily, Barack gets to watch his West Wing box-set in comfort, and US patients get an era of renewed hope.

Which is apt, because this is a hopeful week, running as it does towards Remembrance Sunday. Which should be a day of hope, each scarlet flower a symbol of optimism that the human species can renew itself after horror and will remember not to repeat the stupidity.

Of course, we don’t always remember. Which is why we need the reminder.

One spectacular example of forgetfulness recently came from our plate-faced pudding of a Prime Minister, who seems to think that despite the economy remaining in the toilet, a postal order for £50million would be just the ticket for a wizard wheeze marking the start of the Great War, to “capture our national spirit in every corner of the country”.

Right, Dave. Because the First World War was just like the Jubilee and the Olympics, which went awfully well. Let’s have another one! After all, we won, didn’t we? There must be some brand advantage in that.

Or you could just buy a bloody poppy. It would be a lot cheaper, and commemorate the end, not the start, of one of the least laudable periods in our history, when for complicated political reasons an almost entire generation of youth was encouraged to trot enthusiastically off to conveyor-belt death by disease, drowning in mud, and the exciting new inventions of chemical warfare and machine-gun fire.

It’s because of buffoons like the leader of the Eton Mess that poppy day is at all controversial, that white poppies become a popular alternative for those who wish to celebrate peace rather than war and others simply refuse to wear a poppy at all.

I appreciate that sentiment, but I don’t agree. Abandoning the symbol doesn’t help: we need to keep the red poppy, not as a celebration of war, but as a annually-renewed reminder of its bloody foolishness; of the needless, wasteful horror and terrible loss; that Dulce et Decorum est really is an old lie.

We need to keep that splash of blood with its blackened core, the gunshot wound worn above each of our hearts, centre stage amidst the military show of Armistice Day.

That’s our renewed hope. Every year. Sometimes, it even works.

Happy birthday to me...

My earliest memory, I believe, dates from 42 years ago today: November 2, 1970. It’s dark, I’m lying down and my father is bending over me, saying “and tomorrow you’ll be two”.

I think this is a true memory. I’ve always thought it to be so, and I seem to have recalled it many times throughout my life, particularly as my birthday approaches. But whether this has refreshed it, or merely rebuilt it and I just remember my own construct, I can’t be certain. According to Wikipedia’s entry on childhood amnesia (the phenomenon that adults cannot remember early childhood clearly), "memories from early childhood (around age two) are susceptible to false suggestion, making them less trustworthy". A bit like Wikipedia. 

I mentioned my memory to my dad some time ago and he doesn’t believe it happened, but that could be because he doesn’t believe I could remember it. I think it is more or less accurate, but I may have altered some details. I’m pretty convinced of the words spoken, but my father’s face is blurry – it’s undeniably him but I’ve no clear picture of him in his late 20s. Also, I think I’m in a bed, not a cot, and in my own bedroom: that’s dubious because of another early memory I have, of being just a little older and breaking out of my cot, which was in my parents’ bedroom.

That apparently quite regular escapade is still occasionally the subject of an amusing family anecdote, but I'm convinced of my memory of doing it because I remember what it felt like. One end of the cot was an integral blanket box, the outer face of which was a curved roller door. I remember clambering onto it from inside the cot and then the discomfort, the pressure on my ribs, as I spun myself round on my chest on its angular surface so I could slide down over the roller. It hurt, but not enough to stop me doing it over and over again. I think it would be hard to construct a memory of physical sensation like that.

And tomorrow I’ll be 44. How very middle-aged. Still, it’s fashionable to be middle-aged – everyone I was at school with is doing it, even the cool kids.

I’m not quite sure when you become middle-aged. Not halfway to three score years and ten, anyway – 35 is young these days, and counting anything by Biblical reference leads to nonsense about the Earth having yet to reach its 6000^th birthday and our ancestors having the opportunity to own pet stegosaurs. 

The generally-accepted gateway to middle age seems to be at 40, and that is closer to the halfway mark suggested by UK National Statistics, which is just about 80 (except for viewers in Scotland). So by that token, I have been middle-aged for four years, or ten per cent of my life. But these averages don’t really mean much, middle-age is more a matter of mind than of numbers. I think it happens when mortality first bites, at that point when our sense of invulnerability quietly slides away and we see the final curtain flapping in the wind, even if it is still some way away.

In my case, that was just about a year ago. In the run-up to my 43^rd birthday various doctors interviewed, examined and scanned me to ascertain why I had thrashed epileptically across the office floor at the start of October; a week later I went for my first MRI, and disturbingly quickly after that had what is probably still the worst day of my life so far - November 16, 2011 - when I woke up to a phone-call telling me my lovely wee Gran had died, and then went into hospital to learn that I probably had a brain tumour. 

Less than a week after that I was chatting with neurosurgeons who asked nicely if they could cut into the side of my head to check. And on December1, they did.

Just days before that operation I started this blog, so everything that followed - the whole unpleasant business of being told that I did have a tumour and it was likely to try to grow a new head, having to tell other people, and then the vaccines and radiation and chemo, the tiredness and sickness and hair-loss – have all been well documented.

So if you've read at least some of that, you'll realise that on the whole 43 hasn't been a great year for me. But while I hate to cast myself as relentlessly optimistic – I do like to examine all available silver linings for clouds – I can’t help seeing the upsides to this year: I married the love of my life, had a couple of great holidays, and my new-found sense of mortality reinforced my sense of how precious time is, which has given me greater ambition to do things for the fun, satisfaction or hell of them (more on that in later posts, perhaps).

And tomorrow, I’ll be 44. So tonight, Clare and I are off for some posh drinks and then a nice meal in a new and highly-recommended restaurant. Tomorrow, I will go out with my mates for some not-at-all posh drinks, some increasingly badly-focussed pool-playing, a curry, and further beerage to finish.

Wish me a happy birthday. And if you want to make it happier, click the donate puff at the top of the page and give The Beatson some money.

They’re the reason I’m feeling good and ready for another year, after all.

Enjoy yourself (It's later than you think)

Autumn was always my favourite time of year. Specifically now, mid-autumn, when Keats' mellow fruitfulness is coming into its own but we haven't quite got to the mists yet.

I should perhaps add that Keats' poem goes on to witter about bees for whom "summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells". I'm not keen on the image of clammy cells o'er-brimming at the moment; what with the brain cancer and everything, I feel there's been quite enough of that sort of thing going on.

Still, I like mid-autumn. I like the light and the colours and the smell of the season, and even though it's the time of year when things are dying off, ready for the bleakness of winter, for some reason it always gives me a sensation of excited optimism. And not just because there are conkers to be had.

So it was into all this that I stepped from hospital yesterday, walking into the cold, low sunshine of a beautiful autumn afternoon in which it was good to be alive and abuzz with the knowledge that, for the time being at least, I'm fine.

I'd just had my latest set of scan results, the pics from my third quarterly intra-cranial photoshoot. They came out nicely, thanks. No change - I'm still prettier from the inside out.

I still have a hole in my head, but that's it - no extra tumoury bits are visible.

So I have another clear quarter to look forward to. That's the pattern from now on: another scan, another set of results, another all-clear. Grabbing life in three-month chunks.

The next session in the big, bangy machine is around Christmas, with the results due a couple of weeks later. Until then, no worries.

Yesterday was also something of an ending, as it was the last time I was needed at the Beatson's Clinical Research Unit, where I'd been taking part in an experimental vaccine programme. I gave my last round of blood, and my involvement was over.

When I joined, at the end of December last year, I was among the first on this programme being conducted at the Beatson and a few other centres around the UK, which was slowly accumulating willing and suitable subjects on whom to test a vaccine which had been used successfully against other cancers, but not yet on glioblastoma.

Sure, there was some small risk, but it seemed like no choice at all. I was assured it would have no adverse effect on my other treatment, and since at this stage they were testing for side-effects, I'd get a full therapeutic dose, not a placebo. So if it failed, I reckoned, no problem, I'd still be getting the gold-star treatment in which the Beatson specialises; but if it succeeded... well maybe, just maybe, it would help that treatment along, maybe even save my life.

So I signed on the dots and since then I have had eleven pairs of itchy intradermal injections into the same bit of my leg, and given blood in various quantities, but no ill-effects. The programme is getting close to its required number of subjects, which is heartening, my inner geek is pleased at getting to contribute to cutting-edge science, and my sense of social responsibility is satisfied, too. I'm proud to have been part of it.

Looking at my MRI pics, each shows a kind of rind around the hole where the tumour once was, and that's apparently been seen in other recipients of this vaccine. It's not cancerous and is perfectly harmless, and I like to think of it as a barrier, either defending against or containing the bad cells: I realise this is probably nonsense in medical terms, but I like the image.

I'm under no illusions: I know that radiation, chemo and vaccines notwithstanding, the cancer is likely to come back. Not least because the doctors keep telling me that, which I think is a good thing, as time is short and precious and it's important not to fritter it away in the warmth of a false sense of security. With or without cancer, we all waste too much of our least renewable resource when we should be making the most of every minute.

And right now, I feel good. My fatigue is less frequent and less unpleasant, and the stiff legs are easing off.

I was told yesterday, "This is your time feeling well. Enjoy it."

Yes. I think I will.

Welcome to paradise

A year ago from Tuesday, I was to all appearances perfectly well, just back from an autumn break in the Highlands.

A year ago from Wednesday, I was sleep-dancing across the office floor, on the right side of my ribcage and with the sides of my tongue clamped between my teeth, wakening in a wheelchair to a paramedic's kind offer of air and a bewildered trip to hospital. The first of many.

The time between has been packed with scans, bad news, surgery, worse news, fear, intra-dermal injections, radiation, blood tests, chemotherapy, fatigue, steroids, stronger adjuvant chemotherapy, more jags and sangrial sampling, a gastric problem which could have pebble-dashed a warehouse, marriage, euphoria, more adjuvant chemotherapy, more fatigue, more scans, more blood, even more fatigue, stiff legs and the resultant Cyberman stride. Yet it honestly doesn't feel like a year. Time flies when you're enjoying yourself.

One year ago today, October 4, 2011, I was at home; slumped, drained and bemused, on my leather couch with which I would become so familiar, on my first of so many sick days with which I would become so bored, wondering what the hell was going on.

A year later, I'm sitting at a picnic bench under a big tree, in an almost perfect little cove on the north shore of Bermuda. It's 28°,  the sea is blue, something's singing in the next big tree along, and there's just enough cloud cover to let me see my tablet screen and type this. Soon I will go in search of beer. Life's tough.

We're here in this island paradise as guests of my friend and former colleague Raymond Hainey: gentleman, journalist, and all-round good chap; and also one of the finest operators the Scottish press has allowed to escape. While he has been chained to the type-face, Clare and I have beached and lunched and beered, and when he hasn't, Raymond has generously driven us to the sights while we have generally got under his feet and cluttered his flat.

And I feel much better for it. Sure, I sunburned my feet on day two (I never burn anywhere normal, like on the shoulders - for me it has to be somewhere awkward, such as the ankles or forearms or feet), and I twisted a knee falling down the stairs in a pub (it was lunchtime, and I'd only had the one pint), but I feel so much healthier; lighter even.

I'm not going descend into hippy wittering about a healing atmosphere, because that would be nonsense. But sunlight lifts the mood, warmth relaxes, and the light exercise of sight-seeing is probably doing me no harm. The Boris Karloff stomp has eased off as my legs feel stronger, and although I still get tired, it feels cleaner, a warm sleepiness compared to the sickening, bone-deep fatigue which hit before. It would be nice to think that easing will continue back in Scotland.

Of course, I will have to return to the results of the scan I had just before leaving.

But in the meantime, I'm relaxing in Paradise. Still with a hole in my head, but relaxing.

I'm not worried. I feel good.

So far it's a happy anniversary

Walking the walk

I’ve started making the old-man groaning noise when I get out of chairs, except with more swearing. I’ve got to say – this cancer thing’s full of surprises. My legs have seized up.

Not entirely, I should say. But it’s not comfortable.

Every hour or so I try to remember to get up from my desk and take a stiff-legged stroll around the office; to the kitchen, the toilet, the vending machines - any destination which has some point to it and which takes me out of view for a bit, so I don't look like I'm doing some kind of circular Boris Karloff impersonation among the islands of workstations.

My wife Clare was first to call it my Frankenstein walk. Frankenstein was, of course, not the monster but the scientist, who as far as I remember had no mobility problems, but Clare's far too sensible to let that get in the way of a perfectly clear description which everyone will understand instantly. I, on the other hand, am far too much of a pedant not to, so I privately call it the Bangles Bimble: I'm thinking of the mummy from Scooby Doo - I Walk Like an Egyptian.

The stiffness is the result of coming off steroids about six weeks ago. I've mentioned it here before, but it's currently the after-effect of my treatment which is bugging me most, so now it's going to bug you again.

Apparently the ligaments in my legs and back have loosened up, but it doesn't feel like looseness: quite the opposite. I stomp around straight-legged until things slacken off, I haul myself out of chairs with my arms if I have sat for too long and am having difficulty with the knee-unbending and thigh-stretching, and going up stairs is difficult. Which is a particular bugger when you live up four flights. My adventures on Google suggest this could last for three or maybe up to six months.

But it will pass.

I'm also now off the chemo. Its abiding after-effect is fatigue, which is much worse than the locked-up legs. But at least it comes and goes, while the stiffness is always with me.

As usual, day one of the final chemo was fine, but then... who'd have thought there could be so many flavours of tiredness? Degrees, yes - but types?

Over the remaining four days of the course and for a day or two after I experienced a weird series of ups and downs ranging from mildly sleepy to bone-sick exhausted.

At my worst, while I was still popping the poison, I noted that each type of tiredness had a different feel or texture, and wondered if I should become a connoisseur of fatigue and catalogue them here like whiskies. Then I wondered if I might not just be rambling: I was quite tired - at that point a dull little number with a sort of numbing sensation in my shoulders and arms, if you're interested.

That was about three weeks ago. Since then I have had days when I have been alternately energetic and shattered, days like yesterday when I have woken up tired, and days like today where I feel more-or-less normal.

I’m told the after-effects of the chemo could also last perhaps six months. It might not be so long, given my relative youth and strength, but I'm prepared for the days of unpredictable tiredness to continue for a while.

And eventually this, too, will pass.

In the meantime, the trick is to make the most of things even when the symptoms are making their presence felt. Just marking time, looking forward to the end of the stiffness, the end of the fatigue, and ignoring the present would not be healthy. It would be like treating the working week as days to be endured until the weekend comes, the month as time to be tolerated until payday; people do that, but it's wishing your life away, and those of us on the cancer-go-round are a bit sensitive about that.

So I get on with things. I go to work. I make plans to do stuff as I always have and, mostly, I keep to them. I went to see Patti Smith in concert last week and loved it, even though my legs were in agony after the two-hour stand.

Maybe if I were a sporty type all this would be harder, but I play with gadgets and with words, and I don't have to move much for either.

Anyway, most days aren't tired days, these days. It's getting better.

But when they are, I read and write and watch and listen and generally learn new things. Oh, and play obscenely violent computer games - that's a good one. Obviously, all that is as far as concentration allows; the fatigue regularly dictates that I put down the newspaper, Kindle, laptop or handset and just kip. I do resent that a little as wasted time, but it can also be pleasant, so I feel I should just enjoy it.

Here in the Tumourland Fun Park, it's important to enjoy all the rides.

Who's gonna drive you home?

Yesterday I popped into the Beatson for a wee bleed and to pick up this month’s bumper bag of harsh chemicals. My last. That’ll be six monthly poisonings under my belt come Sunday, with no more due.

I should have got this round of chemo last week, but my white cells were low and my consultant regarded it as “a bit gung-ho” to dole out drugs which batter the immune system while it was already punch-drunk. So the regular envenoming was deferred for a week, my counts returned to normal, and this morning I took the first of my final five doses.

Feeling fine so far.

I’d like to think it’s my last round. It’s the last I’m scheduled for, and the last I’ll get as long as things remain as they are. If one of my three-monthly scans shows anything tumourly trying to sneak back, I’ll be back on the Temozolomide sharpish, but I’m not planning on that happening. I’ve told it not to.

I had hoped that the end of the chemo would mean an end to the off-and-on tiredness which has plagued me throughout this whole process. I’d reckoned that since it takes a month for me to recover sufficiently between treatments, then a month should be enough to get back to normal.

Nah.

I’m now told that the fatigue can last up to six months after the chemo stops; it depends on the individual, and there doesn’t seem to be any way of telling how it will hit, other than that younger, fitter patients recover more quickly. That includes me (no, really) so with a bit of luck it will ease off sooner than later. Ideally before I go on holiday.

The other thing I wish would just bugger off and leave me alone is the constant stiffness in my legs and occasionally arms. It’s a bit like the sensation you get the day after a long hill-walk, but all the time (I can’t really compare it to many other kinds of exercise, having spent most of my life avoiding them, but I have been known to enjoy the occasional countryside meander). If I sit still for too long I need to haul myself up with my arms and then waddle rather than spring gazelle-like across the room, as was once my wont. This, I gather, is a side-effect of coming off steroids; they cause some muscle reduction, but also a loosening of ligaments in the back and legs. I’m told pregnant women experience something similar: I’m hoping this is the only symptom we’re going to share; I could do without morning sickness, haemorrhoids or childbirth.

But the really grim symptom of all this is the news that I may not be able to drive again for a very long time. I had previously been told that I would be likely to get my licence back a year after the surgery. That was on December 1, so I was starting to look forward to my licence's return. Counting down, even.

Now I’m told that it could be at least two years, and no-one’s very sure from when. It all depends on when the DVLA (not my doctor, apparently) decides my primary treatment ended, or indeed what my primary treatment was.

If they decide the primary treatment was the surgery (which my research suggests they won't) then it’s another year from December. If they decide it was the radiotherapy and first round of chemo, it’s a further year from mid-February. But if they decide the adjuvant chemo I’m just finishing off is part of the primary treatment, then it’s two years from now. And if I need any further treatment during that period, the clock resets.

This is quite crushing. Quality of life is pretty important just now, and not being able to drive is a massive limitation. Blind 75-year-olds and mental teenagers are allowed licences; what makes me less safe than them?

Well, the huge hole in my brain, apparently. But I have only had the one fit, and that nearly a year ago (it’s how I found out about the cancer in the first place). Since then I’ve had the tumour which caused it cut out, the area around it zapped and poisoned, and I’ve taken anti-epileptics daily. I haven’t so much as twitched in all that time. Surely I’m safe to be behind a wheel?

It seems the DVLA thinks not. They won't even ask my doctors for their opinion, I'm informed; the decision will be made by a government medic who will never meet or examine me, based on some forms which don't contain space for my doctors' input.

I understand the reluctance of officialdom to have people with large chunks of their brains missing hurtling around the countryside in cars. But I'm being checked on very, very regularly. Even now the chemo's over and my monthly trips to the Beatson have come to an end, I will still have three-monthly scans. Surely these could be used as the basis for my continued right to drive, with my licence renewed quarterly every time a scan gets the all-clear? It wouldn't be hard to administer electronically, and it would save a lot of misery for a lot of people in my position.

The next scan is in September. It was scheduled for the 28^th, but by the time I got the date I’d booked a holiday, so it was moved forward to the 19^th. Which is fine, but it means I won’t get the results until I’m back, so I’ll spend my two weeks in the sun Not Knowing. Looming capitals intended.

Still, it should be fine. June’s cerebral photo-shoot wasn’t substantially different from March’s, and I’ll have just finished my treatment, so there’s no reason to think September’s will show any changes either.

So if it is OK, can I drive at least until the Christmas scan, please? It would at least give me something immediately positive out of the cycle of quarterly anxiety I'm going to have to get used to:  the build-up to each scan, the wait for the results, and the hoped-for relief when they come back clear.

Until they don’t. But that might (just might) never happen, or at least not for years. Until then, I could be driving safely and happily.

Just a thought.

Stating Points of View...

Dear Auntie Beeb,

Can I call you that? It’s just that I’ve known you since I was a wee boy, ever since Brian Cant was the coolest thing on the telly. It’s like we’re family.

Anyway, you might have heard I’ve not been too well, recently. Just a spot of light brain cancer, nothing to worry about, but it has meant that I’ve been spending quite a lot of time in front of the TV. I get quite tired, you see, and it's as good a place as any to have a slump.

But I can’t say I’ve been very impressed.

I have an established pattern, which is to come home from work knackered, watch the news, have my tea, then fall asleep during the One Show, which you seem to have designed for that purpose. I then won’t surface for an hour or more, until around the time the grown-up telly starts. Unless it’s an Eastenders night, in which case I will wake up to change the channel; these people have voices like Stihl saws and even I can't sleep through that. Our cats are convinced the ’Stenders theme tune goes dum-dum-dum-dumdumdumdum-urgh-bloodyhell-click-zzzzzz.

It’s not the most exotic or productive way to spend an evening, but it suits me. And you’ve spoiled it, Auntie. This summer, there’s been nothing on. Nothing I even want to sleep through.

First there was football, all that Euro 2012 nonsense that Scotland wasn’t even in. You even moved the news for that. You can’t do that: the news is at six o’clock – there’s a law or an old charter or something. Moving it is wrong.

Then there was tennis: Wimbledon, the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club’s annual knockabout. Tennis is boring and goes on for hours; I hoped for a bit more tension from the croquet finals, but you didn’t even show them.

After that there was golf. Some blokes went for a walk, hitting little white balls in front of them, and eventually one of them was given a claret jug and some money. Whoopie-do, Auntie, whoopie-do.

And through all this, there was the building threat of the Olympics. 

The run-up alone seemed to last most of my adult life.

The torch relay just went on and on and on, and it's not even traditional: the Nazis started it in 1936. And I didn't even bother to watch your rowing drama Bert and Dickie; it looked like a damp Chariots of Fire and I can't help suspecting it was partly responsible for holding up Dr Who this year, which is unforgivable.

I watched the opening ceremony, of course, but I did so on iPlayer, mainly because it has a fast-forward button and I couldn't face three hours of bombastic special effects that night; I went to see The Dark Knight Rises instead. Bits of the Boyle-fest were quite good – it really annoyed Morrissey, for instance – but it did leave me feeling that both Paul McCartney and the monarchy have now had their day.

After that, though… well, the thing is, I don’t like sport, so the Olympics have been a bit of an entertainment dead-zone for me.

Maybe I should explain: I have never liked sport. I know, I know, you don’t understand or don’t believe me. That’s most people’s reaction. Others just look at me like I have just admitted to being a Scientologist or a snail fetishist, or are incapable of processing the information and commence The Football Chat anyway.

I don’t know why I don't like it. I was never good at sport and went to a school at which being bad at games ranked you lower than amoebic dysentery, so that might be part of it. But I suspect it’s because I don't get sport. Don’t understand it. No comprendo.

In my defence, there's quite a lot not to get. Like the scoring in cricket, for instance: I played the game (admittedly under duress) every summer for about six years and I still don't understand that.

Or football. Why is that interesting? The plot's broadly the same every time, it has no soundtrack (well it does, but it seems to consist largely of songs about Irish history and Victoria Beckham's bottom) and there is very little chance of a car chase. Yet I've met people who can barely spell IQ but who can and will talk at massive length about the intricacies of a game in which all I have seen has been some very highly-paid haircuts kicking a ball about for rather longer than seemed necessary.

So the Olympics are just the grand culmination of the general sense of boredom and incomprehension you’ve inflicted on me all summer, Auntie.

Why would I feel involved? Why does every other armchair-bound slob seem to gain some sense of personal achievement from the success of highly-tuned athletes who happen to have been born in the same country as them? What have they done to deserve this vicarious thrill, apart from pulled up the roots their buttocks have sent into their couches and wobbled to the fridge and back? Why are they all so offended when Frankie Boyle Tweets that  Rebecca Adlington has an unfair advantage as a swimmer because she has a dolphin's face? I'm sure Rebecca is a lovely woman and a fine athlete, but she is also a celebrity and uses her media profile to make money; which is fine, but it makes her fair game until she stops taking cash from British Gas. "Eek. Eek, eeek. Eeeeek!", as she said herself, while being awarded her medal and a herring.

Nonetheless, I have watched some of the Games; I haven’t had much choice. But that has just raised more questions.

Why do we now have uneven bars? Is “asymmetric” too difficult a word these days?

Why, Auntie, did you spend so much money moving to Salford, then just weeks later head back to London to broadcast from a glass box balanced on some freight containers? And what’s with the black marble altar surrounded by geometric patterns? Is this so Gary Lineker can boost Team GB’s medal count by raising the aid of a dark, demonic force and interview Bradley Wiggins at the same time?

And what makes Michael Phelps the greatest Olympian of all time? He must be, all your presenters have said so. And yet, while 22 medals is quite a lot, all he does is swim; Daley Thompson had to get blisteringly good at ten sports to get just one of his. And he did it to an Iron Maiden soundtrack. How cool was that?

You don’t need to answer, Auntie. I really just want to know one thing: why is it that, with everyone now receiving digital TV and 24 channels of Olympics available, can’t people like me keep BBC1?

Just in case you change your mind, here’s what I’d like to see on a typical night’s viewing for the rest of the Games:

8.30pm Javelin Catching with George Osborne
Short but sweet. Tune in tomorrow for the Michael Gove episode. And the day after for Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt. You see where we’re going with this?

8.35pm My Great Big Gypsy Website
Sequel to My Great Big Gypsy Wedding in which the happy couples find their new marital homes on a special mapping app comprising a huge arrow pointing to Jeremy Clarkson’s garden.

9:30pm The Only Way Is Wessex
The casts of various reality shows of the last few years are all put in a house without food, drink or spray tan and not allowed out until they’ve read the complete works of Thomas Hardy.

10:00pm News & Weather
Followed by Reporting Scotland and Newsnight, with proper interviewees who don’t wear Lycra for a living, and no abrupt cut off to the cheap local version until the real one is finished.

11:30pm The Late Movie Double Bill
A couple of old classics back-to-back. Maybe The Maltese Falcon, or Gregory’s Girl, or something from The Godfather trilogy. Not Chariots of Fire.

3:00am All-Star Indian Wrestling
With Dale Winton and Archbishop Philip Tartaglia. This doesn’t actually need to be broadcast, we just need to know it has happened.

It’ll be ratings gold.

Love,
Graeme.