The Occasional Papers

A Blog. Lost in transitional space since 2004.

Itch News

Dear Diary. I thought you might like an Eczema Update. It’s what we’re all here for, right?

I no longer claw at myself like a thing deranged. I’m not germy. I’m not bleedy. I’m not sleeping all day. I’m not confined to the house. I am much, much, much, much better.

And yet it continues.

The NHS have a “clinical pathway” for eczema. It goes steroids > phototherapy > immunosuppressant > biologics.

Today I arrive at biologics, meaning that my eczema is finally understood by medical practitioners as “completely bananas” and that nothing else really works. If the biologics don’t work, there’s nothing science can do for me.

But I have faith.

Despite everything.

Steroids were what made me properly ill last year. They sort-of work on eczema (but not really) and the side effects of long-term ‘roid use are appalling. Most doctors don’t advise anything beyond the steroid step of the clinical pathway for some reason. No idea why. All steroid creams and pills come with an information leaflet that tells you not to use it for longer than a week; pharmacists make the same dire warning when you buy it over the counter. They give you a stern look, knowing full well you’ll do what the fuck you like with it as soon as you get in the door, forbidding you to use it on your face ever and nowhere on your body for longer than a week. GPs don’t seem to give a shit about any of that. They’ll have you on it for years. Decades! Which is how I ended up disabled for five months last year. Cheers lads.

Phototherapy means reporting to hospital thrice weekly to stand naked but for a posing poch in stand-up sunbed thing to be blasted with light rays. It took ages for this treatment to have any effect on my eczema and I had to pause the treatment halfway for sunburn. I went through this shit twice. It sort-of worked, but only for a few weeks. The eczema just came back and you can’t keep getting the phototherapy lest it give you superpowers or cancer. Well, at least they heed the warnings on this one.

The immunosuppressant — a self-injected concoction that tells your immune system to stop freaking out over nothing — actually worked. I was largely eczema-free while I took it. It just made me poorly in other ways. I found myself nauseous to the point of collapse for at least one day a week. Don’t get me wrong, it’s better than debilitating eczema, but I can live without it. I’ve been off the treatment for two weeks now and the eczema is coming back. I’ve had some very satisfying scratching sessions.

So now it’s biologics time. So far as I can tell, it’s basically nanotechnology.

The injections are hand-delivered by a special company with a refrigerated van and must be placed directly in the fridge next to the yoghurts as soon as they arrive. Which I have dutifully done. The meds come with a huge wad of literature, a plastic sharps bin, and an app to download. I think it’s all supposed to make me feel less nervous about taking the injections, but it really serves to have the opposite effect.

Ah well, bottoms up.

The Year of Piss

I have published a short novel about piss. I’m quietly proud of it. More for the mischief than anything.

I haven’t really promoted it yet, but there’s a really nice interview with me by John Robinson here.

You can buy an expensive but excellent hardback edition here and/or a bargain paperback edition here. There’s also a digital edition in case you are a Borg. All editions contain a pair of illustrations by Landis Blair.

Anyway, this must be the year of piss because Rosie Holt has this amazing-sounding piss play going on. It’s called Churchill’s Urinal:

Freshly installed in 11 Downing Street, a fearless female Chancellor of the Exchequer is determined to get rid of the ancient urinal in her grace-and-favour en-suite. Intrigue overflows into outrage when it transpires that the porcelain was first tinkled on by that undying icon of Britishness, Winston Churchill. Soon, the whole nation has a view on this storm in a pisspot. Join us for this rambunctious romp through the corridors of power and discover whether our fearless Chancellor’s grip on her Budget red box can survive the clamour for her Whitehall washroom to be awarded a Blue Plaque.

Yellow heart emoji for piss freaks. 💛

Practice

People are getting better at the “practice” versus “practise” rule. Have you noticed?

Bloggers get it right more often than not now. Submissions I receive for New Escapologist, even when they’re terrible, get “practice” and “practise” spot-on.

It’s like when supermarkets a few years ago started describing their express checkout lanes as being for “five items or fewer” instead of the incorrect but time-honoured “five items or less.”

You see, “practice” is a noun and “practise” is a verb. It’s “an artistic practice” but “practise makes perfect.”

I’m a bit of a grammar pedant with strong feelings about ugly words, but I’m sorry to say I’ve been left behind on this “practise” business. For me, it’s all “practice” and always has been, but apparently that’s the American way.

For once, I distance myself from the pedants. It can all, I think, be “practice.”

I still prefer “foetus” to “fetus” though.

Brilliant and Funny

This just in:

I finished Rub-A-Dub-Dub today. It has been a most treasured summer read for me. Brilliant and funny (I think I averaged one chortle per page). Hit me in the way the best Kurt Vonnegut books do: a humane portrait of the absurd, futile and grotesquely beautiful enterprise of being human.

So fuck this guy.

One chortle per page is good whack, by the way. The book is 281 pages, making it better for your abs than any kind of workout.

And this is the sort of thing I like to see:

Smells Nice

Not too many of these left on Planet Earth.

I gave these out at gigs in 2008. Made by Eric and Tommy.

Yentob

Alan Yentob died. I used to think I was the only person who liked him. And I did like him. I thought he was cool.

But Amol Rajan’s tribute to him is something else:

Engaging, witty and endlessly curious, he brought energy and warmth to every conversation. He was generous with his time, fierce in his convictions, and full of joy in the work of others.

To work with Alan was to be inspired and encouraged to think bigger. He had a rare gift for identifying talent and lifting others up – a mentor and champion to so many across the worlds of television, film and theatre.

Modern art never had a more loyal ally. His shows were always brilliant, often masterpieces, sometimes seminal. So much of Britain’s best TV over five decades came via his desk. That was public Alan. In private, he was magnetic, zealous and very funny, with a mesmerising voice and mischievous chuckle. He oozed fortitude until the very last.

He had his foibles and failures, but Alan Yentob was one of the most generous, influential, singular, passionate, supportive, creative and loved men of his generation. I commend his spirit to the living.

Now, that’s a loved man. Imagine a colleague saying that about you!

Some favourite Yentob things:

1. He is one of the “men” in Nigel William’s Two and a Half Men in a Boat.

2. BBC’s Arena arts documentaries – here’s my playlist of about 50 episodes scrounged up for rainy day viewing whenever they appear on YouTube. I wish the BBC would put all of them online in an archive – there were hundreds of these made, as well as Monitor, Ombnibus, and Imagine strands.

3. Dickon Edwards’ 2006 account of being on Imagine: “Mr. Yentob is nowhere to be seen.”

4. A 2016 Guardian profile of Yentob, “the last impresario.”

5. Cracked Actor

Fridged

You’ve seen a version of this pic before, but m’colleague Mark just sent me a signed version in the post.

Signed, that is, by S. Lee and R. Herring (who, despite that various other achievements in work and life will always be Pliny and Histor to me) at their separate gigs last week.

Normally I put this sort of thing in my Kubrik Box, but this one made the fridge. I want to see it every time I get milk. “There’ll always be milk!“

Zit

In an empty elevator this morning, I used the mirror to squeeze a zit.

It was a luxurious experience. The mirror was huge, wall-to-wall. The lighting was bright and even. What better opportunity for an act of minor surgery?

Just as I was getting to grips with it, a tiny voice said “hold the lift,” but it sounded distant and surely not for me (this was a bank of six elevators).

A woman slithered in sideways through the closing doors. “Oh sorry,” I said, “Did you just ask me to hold the lift?”

“Yes, but that’s alright.”

“I was just using the mirror to squeeze a zit,” I said.

“Ah.”

“So I wasn’t being an arsehole,” I said, “Just disgusting.”

Glad we got that cleared up.