Argh!!

I can’t help feeling that the Lothians NHS system is out to get me. My whole week has been like a pantomime. This is a long story and if anyone’s bored, of a delicate disposition or suicide-prone, they shouldn’t read it.

Last Friday, I woke up to find that my ear was blocked, and after trying to unblock it I came to the fairly logical conclusion that something must be stuck in there. So I thought I’d play it safe went to the university doctors that afternoon instead of having a go myself, and she peered inside to see something white (probably a cotton bud). Still no idea how it got there, it’s pretty strange and one of the stupidest “injuries” I’ve ever had before - although I did once break my toe ‘fixing’ an arcade game machine. So the doctor tried to take it out with a pair of tweezers and failed, pushing it back in. She then referred me to the ENT ward at St Johns, which is about a 2 hour bus journey away, because she didn’t feel so confident doing it herself, not being a specialist.

I got on the bus, and in true pantomime style the driver was going about a million miles an hour, and the old lady sitting next to me kept clinging on to me for dear life as we went round the corners. I arrived at St Johns, thinking I’d be there for an hour at most and then I’d be on my way back home to enjoy my weekend revising. No, there I was, alone in the waiting room for over an hour, when I got called in and a very junior doctor straight out of med school tried to get it out with a sucker tube thingy. That didn’t work either and it hurt like hell. I’ve been there for almost 2 hours now and it’s not budging, so the doctor says “I think it would be a good idea if you stayed overnight so a more senior doctor can look at you in the morning.”

I’ll be damned if I’m spending a night in hospital on a throat ward with spluttering old men keeping me awake all night when I’ve got work to do, so I said “I’d rather go home, I’ll come back here first thing in the morning”. In hindsight I should have just stayed on the bloody ward, but I failed to see how a doctor with an extra letter after his name would be more qualified to get something out of my ear, surely a mechanic would do a better job. 2 hours on the bus later I got back home and got on the internet, to see if there was anyone in Edinburgh who might be able to help me, not 2 hours away, and to my horror I discovered that Lauriston Place, not 5 minutes from my flat, has an ENT clinic. So I thought I’d ring them in the morning and go there instead of St Johns.

So I rang the next morning and the person on the other end told me that the appointments office is only open weekdays. I looked at my watch and it was 9.30am, too late to get myself down to St Johns in time to catch the senior doctor. No matter, I can wait till Monday, I’ll call Lauriston then and get an appointment.

So Monday comes around and I call Lauriston first thing hoping I’ll be able to get an appointment that day. No. The jobsbody on the other end says “oh you can’t book an appointment here, you’ll have to go and get your GP to ring St Johns and get an appointment at the clinic here…”. So with a funny feeling I was going around in circles, I went back to the university doctor during open access that morning, and they got me an appointment at Lauriston for this morning, Thursday. So after another 3 days of not being able to hear anything that goes on on my left side (not ideal for a barman), I went there this morning.

Would you believe it, I got the same junior doctor at the clinic who couldn’t help me at St Johns. I’m banging my head against a wall here and she still can’t get it out, but luckily there’s another doctor next door who she thinks can help. So she goes and gets him and he’s one of those old school patronising bastards who treats both me and her like 4-year old schoolchildren, but at least he’ll be able to help, I’m thinking. Again, no. He takes a look and after noting that I’ve got very strong cerumen glands, haven’t I (why yes doctor, I suppose I have), he puts some weird jelly stuff in my ear that will supposedly reduce the swelling, and gives me an appointment on Monday when hopefully someone’s going to do something about my friggin ear! Meanwhile I’ve got an oral exam tomorrow morning, which won’t be fun because I can’t hear half of what people are saying to me in English, never mind Chinese.

Just a bit of a rant.

Death and beyond

Today’s humanist society meeting was very interesting. We had a man with us who’d never been before, and he soon told us that he’d had a pretty bad time and that he’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and he’d been going to all different religious organisations, and now he was looking at humanism for answers. He asked some really good questions and brought up some issues that I want to discuss here a little. It’s going to be a brief one because I’m due in work fairly soon.

Anywho this man (let’s call him John for anonymity’s sake) was scared, quite frankly, by the humanist viewpoint that there’s nothing after death, it’s just oblivion. David, our rather blunt philosopher-in-residence, replied that there’s nothing you will experience that is oblivion because you won’t be there, so it’s not that bad.

Personally I gave my own slant on the issue, which I’ve probably mentioned somewhere on here before. For me, although there is nothing physical or “spiritual” after death (Tim at the Friendly Humanist would probably not like me using the word ’spiritual’ in this way, contributing to religion’s monopoly on it), you live on in people’s memories of you and the
legacy that you leave on the world and on people around you. You would hope that these memories and your influence would be a positive one, but maybe not.

The conversation took many twists and turns (including a hell of a lot about brain surgery, can’t imagine why), but somewhere along the way we got onto the topic of the meaning of life, or to quote exactly from John, “why am I here?” Again, humanists don’t agree on everything, but I’m sure a lot of them would agree with me that since there’s no creator, noone has sat down and made a purpose for each one of us to live, or given a reason for life more generally. So your reason for living can be whatever you think is important, and we agreed that “making people’s lives better”, as we put it, was a very good start. John was a healthcare worker so I’m sure he’s done this in many ways.

John asked if we thought it was necessary to have children in order to leave a positive legacy on the world, and each one of us replied with an emphatic ‘no’. Although in purely scientific circles the reason each one of us lives is because of a long line of predecessors, and so it could be argued that our purpose in life is to continue the species and to “live on” through them, personally I think it has less to do with the continuation of your DNA, and more to do with how you’ve influenced people, regardless of whether they’re of your bloodline or not (or to put it in Dennettite language, “less to do with genes and more with memes”).

I’m glad we had this discussion. It showed us that although the humanist worldview is perfectly capable of providing comfort and guidance to someone in quite a difficult position, so far organised humanism has found it difficult to replace the community feeling that religion benefits from. It’s my vision that in the future this will change.

To finish this off, I’d like to quote Richard Dawkins from the opening lines of his book Unweaving The Rainbow, which are very meaningful for me, and I’m sure a good number of other humanists feel the same way.

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could be here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, who are here.”

I think I’ll leave it at that for today.

Humanist Society Update

A plug first . Today and tomorrow are the EUSA election days. If you’re a student at the University of Edinburgh, I don’t care who you vote for but it’s very important that you vote. Don’t leave the decision in the hands of the politically-minded cronies in the various party headquarters, pull your finger out and go and vote. It’s a shame that, yet again, the elections are so male-dominated and that there isn’t such a diversity of choice, but there’s bound to be someone who says something you agree with.

I haven’t got a lot to say today seeing as I’ve mostly been writing essays or working for the past few weeks, so I’m just going to try and update the outside world on what we at the Edinburgh University Humanist Society are up to. I should be doing another essay so I really am just procrastinating.

This coming Friday is the last in our series of “God’s Warriors” video showings in Appleton Tower. Starting at 6 sharp, this week will concentrate on ‘God’s Christian Warriors’, perhaps tacking the sticky issue of Christian fundamentalism in the US. I urge you to come and see for yourself. It’ll be followed by a discussion, and in the past 2 showings these have proven to be refreshingly open-minded.

Talk at the moment is about the upcoming AGM (date TBC but at the moment we’re thinking late March/early April) and nominations for officer positions next year. It’s a little awkward because out of our active membership, several people are leaving the university, and so won’t be able to take positions. I think one of the main aims next year will be to attract some new blood, as I know we’re going to have similar problems this time next year. I for one will be going on my year abroad and other people will be either graduating or finishing off post-grad courses.

Recently we’ve been trying to get an honorary humanist chaplain at the Chaplaincy, with our preferred candidate being Tim Maguire from the HSS. This would be someone that any person at the university with humanist tendencies could go to for advice or counselling, rather than the Advice Place or any of the religious chaplains that exist already. In particular, we were keen to get more of a voice on issues relating to inter-belief events at the university and in the wider community, and although not in an evangelical sense, we thought Tim would be particularly useful when someone is considering leaving their faith, as some of us have found it quite distressing in the past.

Nevertheless, Di at the Chaplaincy has suggested that Tim take the slightly different role of humanist contact, which half-suits us at the moment because we don’t know how well used a humanist chaplain would be, and until we know we can’t really demand a chaplain, but at the same time we’re out of the loop just slightly on Chaplaincy issues. We’ll see if Tim gets much use as a humanist contact and try and raise his profile a little if possible.

The next thing on the agenda to consider is what we’re going to do during Fresher’s Week. Gordon Aikman, the current EUSA Vice President Societies and Activities, has given us until Monday to decide on what we’re going to do and give him some details. Suggestions today involved some kind of debate or discussion about what to do if your friend is a nutcase, something else which would involve going out and informing people about humanism (something similar to the prayer contest was mentioned, during which we tried to use scientific experimentation to find out which deity was best to pray for for divine intervention - IIRC it turned out to be Emmeline Pankhurst, the women’s rights campaigner who famously threw herself in front of a horse), and my own suggestion was a walk up Arthur’s Seat, not an awful lot to do with humanism except for an appreciation of nature, but it’s a good way to get people together.

So that’s what we’re up to at the moment.

Strange weekend

So I’ve been on my own in my flat pretty much all week. It’s been boring, so on Friday I went to my work for a few drinks, ended up going to my favourite bar, Nichol Edwards, had 5 tequila’s in a row and then someone I’m friendly with there invited me back to her flat, with a mate of mine. She turned out to be a massive cokehead and did about 20 lines, and at about 7am I’d had enough (of it all, I don’t mean I’d had enough cocaine, hehe), and went home.

As a consequence of not going home after Nichols on Friday, I then didn’t wake up until 3pm on Saturday. I was in work at 5, and I realised when I got up that my work uniform was still in the washing basket, horrible, minging and dirty. So I washed it quickly, but didn’t have time to dry it properly so I had a damp shirt for my uniform. Not good.

Then, as by now I was going to be late for work, I decided to ride down there on my pushbike. I got to the bike shed downstairs and it wasn’t there. Buggery. So I got the bus to work, found my bike in Hunter Square where I must have stupidly left it before Christmas, and it’s had the living crap kicked out of it. The back wheel was bent in half and the handlebars twisted all the way round, sprocket twisted, brakes bent. So I had to carry it home, because the wheels were broke. I took it to the repair place today and it’s gonna cost me about £40 to repair, which isn’t too bad considering. Most the damage is just superficial, it seems.

Anywho, while I was at work a girl asked me for my number and I gave it to her. Every cloud has a silver lining and all that. But then she spoke to me again later and it turned out she’s 31 (she looks about 25 max). I’m 18. That’s not so good, but I didn’t mind all that much. Then she texted me later and told me she’s also a mother of 2. Again, I’m 18. That’s not so good.

So all in all a pretty crappy weekend, full of disappointments. What have I learned from the experience?

1. Don’t take pretty girls at face value.

2. Don’t be such a muppet and take care of your belongings.

3. Know when you’ve had enough to drink and go the hell home.

4. Actions have consequences.

5. Be better prepared.

I think I have found a good part to all this though. If I hadn’t gone to the girl’s flat and I wasn’t late the next day, then I wouldn’t have gone to the bikeshed, and then I wouldn’t have known my bike was gone, and I wouldn’t have looked for it in Hunter Square. Then it would have been there longer, and the chances are it would have been damaged even more or worse still just robbed, and that would have cost me much more than just £40

Look on the bright side and all that.