The New Rules of the Blog

No blogs for 4 months... oops. And quite a lot has happened, there was the Iranian asylum saga during which I got face to face with the Home Office over an asylum case... (its an ugly face in case you were wondering), the epic trip to France by train (uncomfortable, but environmentally sound... or is it, where do I stand on nuclear?? Hrm...) involving a delicious quantity of rose wine and the best tomatoes I have ever tasted, the holiday in Scotland with swimming in ice cold rivers, the sea and the best seafood ever tasted... (and the rain), the last minute dash to Cheltenham for Greenbelt, and then finally (and ominously) The Return to the study of clinical medicine. Ussain Bolt's awesome 100m sprint was in there somewhere too. And it all went by so quickly.

I've been reluctant to blog. Mostly because my life is dominated by grossly mundane events, most of which take place inside a giant building with lots of beds (not as nice as hotel beds), sick people and not many windows. I have to live here, 1.5 hrs from home in Manchester, start early, finish late, do nights and weekends and spend lots and lots of time in the library.

I'm let out for the occasional day at weekends when I get to look at the outside world. But mostly I'm tired and don't have time to look. Consqequently, my soul has suffered a few little deaths. My guitar is mostly idle against the wall, my books on subjects other than medicine are gathering dust (which I don't have time to clean), my kitchen is lonely and longs to be cooked in, newspapers are unread... and my brain grinds to a halt. So if I were to blog, all there would be to blog about would be medicine. The patients I have seen, the diseases I have learned about, the wicked doctors, the nice doctors, the rude doctors...

Medicine isn't all that bad. I suppose. I mean, I dide choose it for myself after all, so I can't really complain. And people would probably like to hear about it. There is a fascination with the human body, with medicine and with the gruesome tales we medics are capable of, a fascination I can't explain. And I won't play into its hands, because actually, it's all quite boring really.

So perhaps the primary function of this blog from now on will be to force me to think of things other than hospital, patients, examinations, drugs, diseases, and treatments. Each week I will challenge myself to blog you something of a non-medical nature. There will be one exception - I'm reading a lot around pregnancy, childbirth and the medicalisation of what are essentially natural processes. Most of what I'm reading it's at total loggerheads with what the obstetric profession believe. And I'm about to start my Obstetrics training next week. So that could get interesting. But it's more anthropology than medicine, so we'll allow it.