Snippet

Receptionist: "Hello, GP's surgery."

Me: "Hello, I was hoping to speak to Dr Nigel about my vasectomy results please."

Receptionist: "Sorry he's with an important patient at the moment, you'll have to call back."

Me: "I need to speak to him urgently. Can you tell him I have a blog?"

Receptionist: "Oh . . . sorry, sir, I didn't realise. One moment please"

Ten seconds later.

Dr: "Hello? Who is this? I have a VIP in here at the moment you know!"

Me: "Hi Dr Nigel, it's The Jules."

Dr: "The Jules? Oh. Oooohh! Right you are." Muffled voice "Sorry Your Highness, I have to take this call, be back in a moment."

Sounds of doors closing, and a doctor's bum sinking into a chair.

Dr: "Sorry about that. What can I do for you?"

Me: "Well, I was wondering if the results of my vasectomy have come through yet? It's been six months and I got told informally that one of them was okay by your secretary, but it'd be nice to have the official word as it were."

Dr (tapping on computer) : "Well, we're still waiting for you to provide a third sample . . ."

Me: "Third? But I was told you only needed two."

Dr: " Yes,but one of yours was still positive for little swimmers, so we need another to see if you're definitely a Jaffa."

Me: "Say what now?"

Dr: "One of your samples was positive. We need another like we told you in the letter we . . . ah, it appears we have neglected to send you the letter. Sorry about that."

Me (thinking about the lax attitude to contraception that may have been demonstrated round our gaff recently): "Hnnn!"

Dr: "But I presume you're still being sensible with the old . . . " sound of doctor's eyebrows waggling " . . . precautions, right?"

Me: "Weeell . . ."

Dr: "Because it would be daft to take any chances without written confirmation from your doctor, wouldn't it?"

Me: "But you mangled me! You cut 'em, sliced 'em and burnt the tubes with hot metal for three feet in both directions! How can there be a positive sample? It'd be like a throwing a grenade into a bucket of tadpoles and expecting frogs to jump out!"

Dr: "Well, they're notoriously tough, are the human nuts, you know. They can continue producing baby gravy after quite extreme trauma."

Me: "But . . . but . . ."

Dr (chuckling like Dr Hibbert off of The Simpsons): "They can even heal up after a time!"

Me: "But . . . but . . ."

Dr: "And maybe it's because you're a superman, genitally speaking?"

Me: "But . . . well, yes, that's a possibility I suppose."

Dr: "So send us another sample, and we'll see what the results say now. Could just be a blip."

Me (Sighing): "Okay. I'll do one as soon as I've found the La Redoute catalogue."

Dr: "Good. Good. Oh and The Jules?"

Me: "Yes?"

Dr: "Could we ask you to use a specimen jar this time? Don't just send us a sock."

Me: "I suppose. For fussy clinical reasons is it?"

Dr: That, and the fact they're difficult for the lab technicians to wring out."

Me (thinking about the possibility that Bonobo might not be the youngest in the near future, that overtime can only go so far, that savings must be made): Doctor Nigel?"

Dr: "Yes?"

Me: "Can I have my socks back?"

Life Irritating Art

Recently, I decided to have a spot of body modification done. Just a bit of work, not a lot. A nip here, maybe a tuck there, a stitch to hold things together. It's all the rage apparently, and lots of men have it done. Less women, for some reason.

I've had a vasectomy.

When I was in my twenties, I had a friend who was so adamant he didn't and never would want kids that he decided to get an 'ecotmy under his belt. He was a bit miffed that he had to undergo a few months of therapy and counselling to be certain he was one hundred percent sure, until the medical authorities responsible reluctantly agreed and allowed him the procedure.

This led to many years of hedonistic sex with a variety of interesting people, of which we as his peers were understandably envious. Ultimately, his newly acquired freedom resulted in a rather nasty dose of an STD that finally turned him into quite the advocate for condom use.

I wonder if the irony was a painful as the pustules.

So, as I approached my GP with my request, I had my arguments and rationale all sorted out in my head, rehearsed and prepared. The subsequent conversation went like this.

Me: "I'd like a vasectomy please."
GP: "Okay." Gets paper out of drawer. "Sign that consent form and I'll book you in."

Apparently, being forty with two kids does not elicit the concern warranted to younger testicles with more breeding potential.

So, last Friday, newly shaved and proud as a naked mole rat with a particularly good bean bag, I visited the surgery to be met by Nigel, a doctor I have spoken to at work on many occasions, who shook my hand and then fondled my nuts.

And this was just in the waiting room! Aha!

I went into the little side room where a nurse asked me to strip from the waist down, which I duly did. I also took off my socks, although I'm not sure why. Then Dr Nigel came in, talked me through everything and off we went.

And that was it. The initial injection smarted a bit, but after that it was simply a bit of tugging (not in the good way) and the very odd feeling of being able to watch bits of my own innards being exposed, cut and cauterised whilst I propped myself up on my elbows for a good view. It was all less traumatic than I thought it would be.

Nigel pointed out that I would be battered and bruised for a week or two, and to do absolutely nothing for the next couple of days. The nurse was very, very strict about this, lamenting the time she went to Tesco's after work and found a man who had had a vasectomy not two hours before doing his weekly shop.

Apparently, his whole lower body from the nipples down withered and died as a result, leaving him but a sad husk of a man, disconsolately wheeling his torso around on a skateboard muttering the word "plums" over and over again and being unable to satisfy his wife.

I suspect exaggeration, but I wasn't going to take any chances, setting myself up with baby sitters for a couple of days who were invaluable, allowing me do little else except watch films, look at Twitter and read blogs and words on my Kindle, which are a bit like books only made of electric.

I had also planned to do some blogging myself, but the combination of pain-killers and lethargy just isn't conducive to any sort of creative thinking or artistic endeavour, hence the dearth of posts over the last three weeks or so.

Four days later, and I took the single stitch out, realised the wound hadn't completely closed yet and glued it shut again. I've now got a bit of an ache and am still walking like I've lost my horse, but in general things seem okay, especially with the copious ingestion of over the counter analgesics.

So far, so good and, although the bruising is a bit disconcerting, I'm glad I've had it done. Seems only right that a chap take charge of his fertility after years of relying on prophylactics, female responsibility and brewer's droop to prevent babies. 

What's that? You want to know about the bruising?

Of course you do. Everyone does.

Well, I like to think of myself as a subtle writer, delicately weaving gentle strands of description, using misty metaphor and ephemeral prose to entice the reader into using their own imagination to get my message across. I feel this is a skill I can transfer to the pictorial realm, and I shall bring such an abstract photograph to you now to describe the results of my procedure:

Do not worry if you don't "get" it at first. Dali had similar problems, but if you mull it over a few times, maybe discuss it with an educated friend or intellectual colleague you will, in time, understand my allusion, and your appreciation of it will be all the greater for having had to work at it.

In conclusion, ball ache is such a ball ache.

A Pox On None Of Our Houses.

Being a man who knows how to entertain children, I took them to see the birth place of immunisation last week:

Pass me my silver-ended bulls horn old chap.

As you can see, it was like a fairyland grotto for my kids. What four year-old boy doesn't dream of being taken to a museum dedicated to Edward Jenner? That's right kids, it's his genuine desk where he actually worked, or an accurate facsimile thereof yay!

Okay, so even I know the limits of the child psyche, although they did enjoy running around the rooms trying to eat original manuscripts and get some scalpels out of a locked cabinet. The real reason we went was because there was a hedgehog awareness day going on in the grounds, and I want to ensure my kids respect hedgehogs and are never seen smashing them against the wall trying to get the conker out.

Obviously, hedgehogs are the poster animal for immunisation, what with having a back full of needles, that and acupuncture, so it's not quite the topical non sequitur you might initially think, having a hedgehog open day in Jenner's garden.

It was pleasantly informative. They had various hedgehog accoutrement on display, including what they eat (anything smaller than them) and what eats them (anything that needs a toothpick), as well as other dangers inherent to being a wandering spiky insectivore, such as dogs, ponds and conker hunters, as well as a stunt hedgehog who only had three legs as a result of an entanglement with a strimmer.

Spank me! I dare you.

After a while we had exhausted the hogaciousness of the hedgehog gazebo and went for a wander through the grounds.

That day young, enthusiastic archeology students from Bristol University were rooting around in big square holes in the grounds. My one year-old daughter is fascinated by anything which feasibly involves a dangerous fall and went over at once to examine the dig. On that day they had various finds, such as a square shard of pottery, a triangular shard of pottery, a brown stone, a red stone, and a reddy-brown stone.

And two days after we'd been there, a skeleton.

Typical.

We moved from archeology to horticulture and went for a walk around Jenner's garden, which had lots of pretty things like borders, and grass, and flowers, and an orangery for growing grapes in. Technically a grapery, I believe.

Edward Jenner was one of those wealthy, scientific types with interests in natural history and medicine, but it was his research into vaccinations that earned him the epithet of Father of Immunology.

And Stabby McStabberson.

Vaccination involves introducing a denatured, weakened or dead version of a virus into your system so the body develops an immune response to it without actually having to go through all that palaver of being particularly ill.

But if you haven't got the technology to denature a virus (presumably some sort of small apple-corer) you need to look elsewhere. In the case of smallpox, Jenner found a naturally less potent but nonetheless related virus. Enter cowpox, essentially a wuss version of smallpox.

Folk lore had noted (and peer reviewed, by other folk) that people exposed to the relatively benign cowpox rarely went on to develop the much more dangerous, often fatal smallpox. Jenner inoculated a boy with cowpox, left it a few weeks, and then valiantly tried to give him smallpox but couldn't, thus providing and benefiting all humankind with the glory of vaccination.

Good job for the kid that it worked.

Word got around and vaccination became the thing to have done, and it shows a forward thinking mindset to be rather taken with the idea of vaccination and immunisation, because they came from miles around to be infected and protected. Farmers and field hands. maids and Morris men (presumably), all queued up to let Jenner inoculate them with cowpox in order to provide immunity from smallpox.

Of course, a gent such as Edward Jenner wouldn't want (potentially diseased) oiks dragging their muddy hooves through his gracious home, so he sensibly set up an external surgery where it could be done in the comfort of his own garden. Known as Jenner's Shed, it was where the actual vaccinations would take place. Jenner even named it The Temple of Vaccinia, showing he had the naming skills of a fourteen year-old writing a fantasy novel.

Anyway, it is rather pretty and any self respecting bloke would be proud to have it as a man-space. Here it is:

Roll up! Roll up! Roll up your sleeve!

The small urchin on the floor there is my daughter, The Bonobo, who has directly benefited from Jenner's work because she has herself been fully immunised from a host of once dangerous diseases. This is lucky as she's eating pebbles.

In  the late 1970s, an extensive survey of the world found no signs of smallpox in the human population with no natural reservoirs and so, in 1980, it was finally declared extinct in the wild.

Of course, like any decent horror story, it's not completely gone. There are still tiny pockets, small living colonies kept alive in laboratories under high security in case it or anything similar ever made an appearance in the future. Much discussion has gone in to whether we should destroy these stocks once and for all, with governments arguing that it would be foolish to burn our bridges, should we ever need to study it again, and critics suggesting that its genome has been fully sequenced so it could be recreated from closely related viruses should the need arise, which is a scary thought all on its own.

If we do go ahead and eliminate smallpox utterly, it would be the first deliberate extinction of another species by humankind in all our history, which opens up all sorts of ethical discussions.

Whatever the outcome, I'm hope that, with a thirty per cent fatality incidence from smallpox infection, there is at least ominous music playing in those storage labs just to remind the technicians exactly what they're responsible for, and to be extra, extra careful when storing their butties in the fridge next to the smallpox tin.