Ginness

Today is a lovely day for a Ginness.

Ingredients:

• 4 ice cubes
• 2 oz Hendricks gin
• 4 oz Fever Tree Indian Tonic Water
• 10 oz Guinness Original Stout
• Lime wedge for garnish

Preparation method

1. Gently pour Guinness into a straight pint glass.
2. Place the ice cubes in a tall, narrow glass.
3. Add the Hendricks and the tonic water onto the ice cubes.
4. Stir gin mixture well with a long spoon.
5. Upend gin into the pint glass with the Guinness.
6. Garnish with lime wedge and serve immediately.
7. Rinse and repeat.

* Calories 298.4
* Protein 2.0g
* Sugars 29.6g
* Total Fat 0.3g
* Salt 8.8mg

Blind as a bat.

Having travelled up to That London for the last couple of days of last week, I am feeling positively cosmopolitan.

I had a lovely dinner, although their idea of a commentworthily huge meal in That London equates to a goodly sized bit of beef and too few chips in Exeter, but what can one do? I met some ex-Future people who were pretty much universally nice and it was excellent to see Melvin again after so long.

Perhaps I had better return to ground with which you, my gentle reader, will be familiar. Me.

Not a huge update, I went to the optician. I have been having a few headaches and so I toddled along for a check. The optician is nice enough, but she has terrible breath and a very hairy top lip, which is disconcerting when she leans in to within a mere 27 beard seconds of my face to peer at my retina.

After the normal puffs of air to the face and the watching the balloon test, I have some smashing news: "You have the best long distance vision I have ever measured . . .".

Woo! Yay! Hooplah! Maybe even a punani, except, wait. There was an ellipsis in there, wasn't there? There is a 'but' coming. Oh dear. I know that to many of you this will seem like a petty thing, I am a middle aged man with receding hair, a proceeding stomach and a hopefully infertile scrotum, so how unexpected can it be that my eyesight might be failing? Well, let me tell you this, it is utterly arse!

". . . but you will need a prescription for VDU use".

Bitch.

The overtly camp technician leads me back to the front desk to discuss my glasses, and hands me over to a woman cut from the receptionist mould.

There is something about Doctor and Dentist receptionists which can only be bred there. I sincerely believe that all medical receptionists and school secretaries are from the same original stock. If ever there was an argument for creation and short-Earth theories then it must surely be the guileless, embittered women who inhabit the desks and counters of our nations monopolies.

They know that you have nowhere else to go, you see. They sense that you absolutely need to have the tooth drilled, or to let the headmaster know that little George will be out of class for the next few days with a vomiting bug, so they can be as obnoxious as they like and there is nothing you can do about it.

As long as they smile and remain officious whilst they drain every last drop of joy from your situation, they know that any retaliation on your part will merely mark you down as 'one of them'. You know it too, you have seen them, the ones who are either genuinely unpleasant to begin with or, in the face of constant whittling bile from the haggard spinster behind the Formica worktop, finally snap and storm off in a cloud of expletives. There is no benefit in that, the receptionist merely retains the high moral ground and has another example to prove that the customer is always wrong. You know this and she knows this and, worst of all, she knows that you know it.

There can be no benefit to the human species for these abominations to have arisen naturally. There is nothing in the phenotype which could be classed as a positive variance. Indeed, the receptionist only truly serves to hinder mankind's progress. The only possible explanation remaining is that the receptionists are created by a deity, the alternative, that these acrimonious termagants actually engage in sexual relationships, is too absurd to contemplate.

So, we return to the shrew at hand. Now I only want to wear these glasses when I am in front of a VDU - I do not need them even for reading paper-based print, so appearance is of no real consequence. I mention this and she releases the smallest of sneers. Do not get me wrong, I have long ago learned to face The Receptionists with equanimity, I am not becoming even mildly riled by this crone, indeed I would be far more shocked were she polite or even human, I am merely relaying the situation. To cut a long story short, my lenses are to cost me £225, plus frames. "Shall we start at the cheapest and work up?" she asks with the belittling tone which suggests that a pauper like myself needs assistance.

This is another trait of The Receptionists, they always look down on mere mortal men. Be they manning an NHS drop in desk, behind a Post Office counter or idling away, processing the return of faulty goods at Marks & Spencer, they know you need them and somehow translate this into a superiority which must prove that they are a separate breed. Were these really the poorly paid jobs which The Receptionists pretend, propagating the myth through the advertising of false vacancies in the local press, then their universal confidence that the wealth of the customer does not match up to their own high standards could not be maintained. I digress.

"No, let's not".
"Sorry Mr Manley?"
"Let us not 'start at the cheapest and work up'" I should stress here that I am calm and not angry, just conversational, "Let's just leave it for now, eh?"
"I am sorry Mr Manley, but the optician does say that you need glasses for VDU work."
"Well, I have managed long enough and I rather think that 85 pints of Spitfire might well go further towards relieving the stress than a brace of glass discs. Good day ma'am."

I feel elated as I leave the shop. It is not that I have saved £300, but that I have shown one of The Receptionists that I do not need her. I can operate alone. I am a free man. I still need glasses. Bugger.

I slink, yes 'slink', I am not sure that my chin was actually clear of the floor tiles, into another optician, clutching my prescription and avoiding those with thicker spectacles in the hope that my newly discovered ocular deformity will not become exasperated by their condition. The Receptionists await me.

There are three of them, they ignore me. We have all been ignored by The Receptionists, they type at their terminal or hold a telephone to their ear for precisely 5 seconds longer than one can bear before raising their eyes to you. This is different. The Receptionists are not doing anything. Nothing at all. They are merely standing still ignoring My Lordship. The word has been passed.

The fear hits me and I can feel the sweat trickling down the nape of my neck for a full 2 minutes. I attempt conversation, "Hello". Nothing. A direct assault "Hello? Could any of you help me at all, please?". Nothing. Eventually I resort to a fully flanking attritional attack, using a passing little girl, "When you grow up, you make sure that you are not as rude as these ladies". Nothing.

A pretty girl comes over and says pointedly 'They will be with you in just a second' and suddenly all three of The Receptionists clamour to assist. Have I discovered the hedgemon? I leave the three to cackle a-whiles and approach the spectacular hive queen, who manages to sell me a pair of bins, with lenses, for a modest £25 and am away into the night.

16 weeks; the final outing.

Well, I am something of an old hand at this now, having dropped off my first semen specimen almost 4 weeks ago.

I am riding Matthewparker's Lemond Reno, so I am being exceptionally careful today. There is nothing like having a pot of his own ejaculate in his pocket to make a man cycle with care.

This is the point at which everything comes together. based on this deposit Jim could stop using contraceptives and we can safely go on with our lives, OR the pain could have all been for nothing.

It is not really exciting, more worrying. still hurt too much to risk and serious cycling.


Whilst the pot is enormous, it is not as large as a fat cat. Bun is not actually sniffing the bag, it is a clever trick of perspective. Woo!

Anyway, the pot of goo was delivered without a hitch and I stopped in at the bike shop on my way to work and saw my bike, resplendent with its new, larger, 351 frame.

Not a bad day at all.

If it comes back fertile I am not doing this again.

Domestic snowboarding

Okay, everyone knows that it is snowing in Devon. The M5 was closed. Dug had to abandon his car and walk the two and a half hours home, where his water, heat and general life support had all failed. Crashed happened everywhere. Many people could not get necessary food and warmth and Manley went snowboarding overnight.


I know it's a fuzzy image, but they all were, it was dark and I fell on every single run - image provided courtesy of the ever lovely Tinium.

The back out of the Land Rover was fun, as was three up on a board. I fell over lots and should apologise to Mel for smashing her trays, but if it is any consolation I have two nasty puncture wounds, on in my thigh.

Cheers in particular to Dagnal, Ads and the giddy-bobbards for a smashing evening and at least I was not the one who broke a snowboard.

And there goes the car.

So, on Friday I broke the frame on my Dawes Milk Race, which I have had since passing my Common Entrance in 1988.

Today, upon leaving Sainsbury's car park, the prop shaft fell off the Delica. Buying the guitar is looking more and more like a mistake.

One interesting thing about this is the diverse nature of human behaviour. In the scenario of a supermarket car park everyone is very busy and selfish. Around a dozen cars manoeuvred around me, sounding their horns, whilst I stood in the road and picked up my prop shaft; none offered to help. Of these, all but one then pulled back into the right lane and queued behind my stricken Delica, sitting with her hazard warning lights on and without a driver, and proceeded to toot their horns in rage at the commander-less car.

Given that I was actually standing in the road, holding a prop shaft in my arms, one would imagine that they could have considered the situation and avoided delaying themselves further.

In stark contrast, once I was out on the open road (the great joy of a four wheel drive truck is that, on the occasion of breaking a half shaft, prop shaft, or even the diff, one can slip into 4WD and trundle on, to all intents and purposes a normal front wheel drive vehicle - that and being able to go jumping in the woods) several individuals were intent on warning me of my oil leak (I lost a chunk of gearbox in the process of the prop's suicide) in a friendly manner.

Given that the first group of people were merely forced to change lanes momentarily (if you are a Usonion then you probably need to look that word up - the way you use it is entirely wrong) and the latter chaps were actually having gearbox oil sprayed all over their cars, I would suggest that we, as a species, cope more easily with problems as they become more severe.

Either way, my Delica is undoubtedly beyond economic repair (the prop managed to take a goodly chunk out if a fuel tank and the water and oil pumps look likely to die, quite aside from the broken gearbox) so I am sans voiture, as the French almost certainly would never say.

I shall take a picture but, in the mean time, I shall settle for swearing mildly about it on the internet:

Bugger.

Late for a wank?

It turns out that my 12 week specimen was due on the 8th. I had completely forgotten and we have all been somewhat under the weather, so this morning I had an early start and then cycled off to the RD&E with a pot of rapidly cooling semen in my pocket.

Now, as you almost all will know, when one has, for whatever reason, the need to drop off a urine sample at the physician's office there are special containers provided for the purpose. These come in a variety of guises, some with salts or chemicals in the bottom, some with labels and some in bags, but they all have feature thing in common. They are almost, but not quite, exactly the opposite of 'large enough for the task'. As a man this is less of a problem. Your average gent has a combination of penis length and waist measurement which afford a reasonable view of the proceedings and, whilst slightly piss-ridden hands are an oft-unavoidable result, getting the sample into the pot is relatively achievable. For those amongst us with orifices which number into double figures the procedure is somewhat more convoluted and I doubt that there are many in your number, dearest readers, who have not at some point thought to themselves 'why do they not make the bloody things in a bigger size?'.

Well they do.

So I am sitting in my bed contemplating an entirely cold-blooded activity which, by its very nature, requires an element of enthusiasm. It is hard enough to muster this with the need to get from the finishing post to the hospital in good time, not to mention getting to work on time and a house full of other people preparing for their day. Adding a collection container which seems better suited to housing an entire shoal of barracuda does nothing for the confidence.

Seriously, the average human male produces between 2ml and 5ml of ejaculate. Where in the name of Hades's least desirable convenience is the need for what is essentially a half pint beer glass with a plastic lid?

So it comes to pass that, with a basically empty pot stretching my jacket pocket to bursting, I cycle off into the cold January wind.

Some men can be somewhat embarrassed about this sort of thing, so the hospital is discrete. There are no large signs at the hospital bearing the legend 'Jizz samples, this a-way!' nor does the depositor have any requirement for human interaction. There is, instead, a small letter box on a building which spectacularly fails to claim it's pathology credentials (I know, I know, but they have all the equipment for the study of liquids, so it's a cinch really).



So, after a minor issue with a car trying to run me over whilst I transport my precious load of hopefully infertile semen, I arrive at the hospital and spend 15 minutes asking a variety of people for directions which, obviously, is far, far less embarrassing than an actual sign saying where to go would have been. Praise the Lord Zeus for the consideration of the powers that be for providing haven from potential ridicule.

In a way it was somewhat anti-climatic. I dropped my pot into the flap and then I was done, so off I rode into the morning mist. To be honest it was probably the least exciting part of the process to date. I simply pedalled off up the hill where, as happens, my bicycle frame snapped cleanly through at the head-tube as I was overtaking a bus.



I have been riding this bike for 21 years now, so it was very upsetting for me as I am sure, gentle readers, you can appreciate. To cheer myself up I bought a Vintage AMG1 Bell Brass Resonator on impulse, so now I have a broken bike and no money to pay for a new frame.

These things are sent to try us.

For those who have asked about the pain, it is still with me, but I intend now to wait until I have the all clear (or, Heaven forbid, the news that I am still fertile) before bothering the Quack again. Poor old bicycle.

For Laura.

Okay, I know that I have not blogged for a while and I apologise. In my defence, I have had exceedingly sore testicles and this had lead me to pursue pursuits in my spare time which lean less towards the typing and more in favour of curling up, grasping my genitalia and moaning softly.

In the past I may have been less than sympathetic to the trials of those who have injured gonads. Getting a chap drunk and betting him that he cannot house both his bollocks into a standard sized Marmite jar was a favourite pastime.

This is, incidentally, an easy feat, one simply pops them in, one at a time. Unfortunately there isn't room for both a plum and a digit, negating the chances of removing said testicles.

As I say, in the glory days of my youth, nothing made My Lordship happier than watching a grown man's face as he holds a claw hammer aloft and contemplates smashing the glass jar which houses his goolies.

This has changed.

I am not sure why I was surprised. After all, a soldering iron was plunged through my scrotum and I could have reasonably been expected to foresee that this may cause at least some level of pain, but the stories from those jaffas who had proudly gone before me were all of joy and pride.

I know, only now, that they were merely eager to be sharing their woe.

The initial agony was far from unexpected. No amount of localised anaesthetic was ever likely to entirely dull the pain and there is a limit to what measure any pain relievers are going to effect upon freshly seared testicles. I was, if anything, pleasantly surprised by how little things hurt once the anaesthesia had worn off.

What worried me was the residual pain which remained with me for weeks.

Now, when things first failed to settle I took it on the chin. It is hard to be anything but stoic when one has voluntarily submitted to such an intensely invasive procedure after all. When it became apparent that my continued discomfort was out of keeping with the advertised norm I had to admit some of the responsibility, after all I had been warned that 7-10 days of rest were called for, whereas I went straight back to work, attended a children's birthday party and generally failed to rest at all. As for the week of abstinence, well - I am sure that nobody really meant for me to remain celibate for a full seven days. I personally was rather proud that I had held off until the day after the operation, although I have to admit that this was more through Jim's protestation than my own self control.

Whatever the cause, after a few weeks I felt I had no choice but to toddle on back to visit Dr Watson to address the issue.

A bit of a prod around discovers a small amount of bruising around the area of the procedure in the right vas deferens, which happens in about 10% of men - nothing to worry about there - and a level of bleeding into the left of my scrotum which has left the poor little orb positively radiant with a ruddy hue and which appears to be unusual in the extreme.

I have the utmost faith in Dr W. (obviously, really - I let the man loose on both my testicles and my future family planning with an instrument which was clearly designed more for minor repairs to a transistor radio than for the severing of a sperm thoroughfare) and he is confident that the bleeding has now past, so I return to base camp.

The pain has yet to abate, but hopefully it will eventually subside. As things stand (and thankfully they still do) the pain is not unbearable, but the idea of living with it for my remaining share of eternity is not one I cherish.

The Vasectomy

Okay, so it is vasectomy time at last. The day started with the youngest Manley throwing a whole large tin of golden syrup on the floor (which was harder to clean up than I had thought) which served to take my mind off the oncoming procedure rather well.

The eldest at school already, the lovely Helen came to collect the younger brace and took them off for a picnic, so there was no real excuse to do anything other than press on to the surgery.

It's a fair old walk down to Dr Watson's dungeons, but I am legally excluded from driving home afterwards, so a walk it is. Normally it would be no problem, but I have a fairly nasty cold and my knee is playing up, not to mention the ever increasing feeling of impending doom.

Of course the receptionists are expecting me and all have a bit of a chuckle - you would think that, by now, they would be used to this sort of thing? Anyway, i settle down for a read of HEAT and associated pulp dross. I did find a nice article about retreats for the famous, which appeared in two seperate magazines, each professing to be from a seperate publishing house, with the same imagery, decoration and words.

A good rant about the improbably low quality of today's print media does help a little, but then Dug arrives. Dug is my boss and, if you want a top Search Consultant, Dug's the man. He also has a new car, so whether his readiness to collect me from the surgery was entirely down to his decency as a human being and his excellent man management has to be questioned when measured against his glee at now having a manual gearbox. Either way, Dug is here to collect me and I have not even gone in yet. I do a little jig as I go to meet him and there is a level of forced jocularity, although we both know that today is not going to be about fun.

Eventually I am called in and Jim comes with me. She is needed to take video footage and photographs, as well as there being the reasonable chance that she might faint, which would lighten my mood considerably, but she is sent out by the nurse. Apparently the first stage is mine to suffer alone.

First off I am placed behind a curtain and invited to strip from the waist down. I have got my massive padded cycling boxer shorts on, so I am a little bit pleased to have privacy, but I have always found it most odd that I get to hide whilst undressing, but then the nurse comes back to prod around with my goods.

Anyway, I get a hot water bottle to apply to my freshly shaven testicles and the doctor arrives. Making a loop in the end of an elastic band (questioning unearths that these are just normal elastic bands and that, indeed, he asks his postman for them) he slips it around my ever shrinking penis (by the time I lost sight of it I essentially only had a tube of skin left, as my willy disappeared back into my spine to escape the hell of surgery) just below the head.

This slips off and I have to reattach it myself, whereupon a pair of scissors shaped clamp is passed through the loop and the clamp attached to my shirt, serving to pull my phallus up onto my stomach and keep it out of the way. A green sheet with a small hole is placed on me, with the target items on the outside and Jim is finally allowed in.

To be honest the nurse was a bit more upset when I showed the elastic band to my wife than I was expecting. She was positively horrified, from what I could gather, but as far as I am concerned, I am doing this for Jim and she has to put up with seeing it, warts and all. I have no warts on my penis or elsewhere.

The next problem is losing cameras - the nurse is quite keen on removing them beyond my reach, but I am adamant. Many people do not understand, but if I am going to go through this then it is important to me to know what happened. It is also worthy of record, just so that, when my memory fades and I recall a 40" blade and searing pain I am able to correct myself.

Then it's the injections. They really hurt. Here, look for yourself:



How much does it hurt? The "Little scratch" (and I was most disappointed that there was no "little prick" joke) was not too bad, but the actual injecting of the local anaesthetic was bloody awful. You are aware, no doubt, of the pain of a dental injection, when it goes all the way to the back of your throat? This is the same. Yes - the back of my throat.

Next comes the vasectomy itself.



I can hear it burning my flesh, I can see the smoke and smell the singe. You hear in that clip how the doctor says there 'It's not a soldering iron'?




Soldering iron?

Soldering iron.



Here the vas deferens has been brought to the surface and Dr Watson is burning through with the soldering iron:



The tube serves to take away the smoke and the smell.

The hole has been clamped and the vas deferens burned, so it is time to locate the other vas deferens now (the left one was first, then the right).

There are two clamps in this image - the sharper, more standard clamps, which are used to seperate the tissue and find the vas (the scrotum not being a sack, but a series of layers of tissue) and the special device used to seperate the vas from everything around it, with the curved ends:



After another round of anaesthetic, it is time for searching for the other vas:



And there it is! (although actually this is the left one again - the right side proved harder to work on and needed a second run - when the second run started I had an active nerve and Jim had to put the camera down to be with me.



All in all, it was not as bad as it might have been, but still considerably worse than I had hoped. I have a couple of giant containers for samples and Dug drove me home so that I could get on with some work.

I'll update on the recovery later.

To give you an idea of what is going on down below during those videos, here's a bollock shot. This chap cuts and ties the Vas, but mine was burned with the soldering iron:

I am a Jaffa

It hurt and it hurts, but it is all over now, bar the wanking.

Vasectomy consent: Given.

Surprisingly it seemed to take Jim more summoning of nerve to sign the forms than it did me. I still feel terribly put out that Jim has to be involved in the decision.

As it happens this is her idea, although she is going off it as it comes near, in case I blame her in later life if she dies and I cannot sire children by another woman.

I am waiting with two children whilst Jim takes the third to school and yes, I suddenly can see all sorts of reasons to have a fourth. I wish I was dim enough not to realise that I am looking for outs here, so that I could legitimately bottle it, but to be honest I never want to shave my 'nads again anyway.

I, Richard Manley of XXXXXX
Hereby consent to undergo the operation of bilateral vasectomy, the nature and purpose of which has been explained by Dr M B Watson.
I consent to the administration of a local anaesthetic.
I have been told that the intention of the operation is to render me permanently sterile and that there is a very small chance I may become fertile again, even after two negative sperm counts.
I understand that two negative sperm counts must be obtained at 12 and 16 weeks after the operation to confirm my sterility. Until this has been confirmed my partner and I must continue to use a method of contraception.
I have been warned that the operation has a low complication rate usually due to infection or bleeding into the scrotum. I have been told that men occasionally experience some scrotal pain following vasectomy but due to the technique used by my Doctor this is considered to be unlikely.
Date.................... Signed....................................................... (Patient)
Date.................... Signed..................................................... (Girlfriend/Wife)
I confirm that I have explained to the patient the nature and purpose of this operation.
Date.................... Signed....................................................... (Doctor)