Despite the metabolic havoc wreaked by hormone implants, I was delighted and relived to find out this week that my HbA1c remains in the ‘normal’ range (34mmol/mol, 5.3%). I was concerned that the weight gain caused by the hormones had messed with my type-2 Diabetes ‘in remission’ status; happily, it has not. I’m also happy to report a weight loss of 1kg (2.2lbs) over the past few days, so perhaps that is on the turn.
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I found a passing mention of a book called Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy published in 1973, based on his PhD thesis. The book reprints articles and news items from Jackson County, Wisconsin, primarily from 1885 to 1900. The book also includes photographs by local photographer Charles Van Shaike and the articles are primarily from the Badger State Banner as well as records from the local mental hospital.
Unfortunately, the book is now quite expensive, however a film adaptation was made for the BBC’s Arena, broadcast in 2000, narrated by Ian Holm. The film is very much available to view in excellent quality on BBC iPlayer and in lower quality on YouTube (links below). I watched the film twice, enthralled. It is very dark (and some may find it upsetting), the more so because the stories are narrated straight without commentary. And the music choices are excellent.
I found the objectivity of it very affecting, especially the many, many human tragedies. I had a powerful sense of the fragility of life and a dissociation from the usual internal narrative of what it is to be human. I sometimes get this in Family Tree Research which, at its most basic, revolves around a narration of birth, procreation and death. Some of that was on my mind when I had my initial cancer diagnosis although it also helped reconcile me to the diagnosis and informed my determination to live life to the full while I’m here.
Wisconsin Death Tripadded something else, a feeling of the shallowness of so much of life, of the wasted potential of our species that has such a high opinion of itself.
This time of year I like to be harvesting fruit from the garden and preparing to make up batches of plum jam or damson jam. Not this year. The weather has been dull since spring and the various plum varieties in the garden have not done well. We got fruit from the greengage but only about half the quantity of last year. The apples look to be doing well, but the fruit is notably smaller than in previous years.
I’ve spent a lot of time writing. I’ve passed the 100,000 word mark in the stories that will form the sequel, of sorts, to the stories in Coyote in the Corner. I reckon I’ll end up around 110-115,000 and will then cut that down when revising. With a fair wind, I’ll publish them some time in the first half of 2025, but there are a lot of stages to go through before that, notably getting feedback on the drafts once they’re ready to go out. Meantime my book sales have flatlined.
Once I am ready to start revising, I’ll also pick up activity around the next book, a novel.
The most recent two stories I’ve written had their first drafts written entirely on typewriter before I revised and typed them into the laptop. The process came easily and I’m considering drafting the next novel entirely on a typewriter on a chapter by chapter basis. The thing about a typewriter is that there are no distractions.
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Meantime, I’ve had my annual blood tests checking up on the status of my t-2 diabetes. I’m happy to say that I remain in remission despite relaxing the strict diet I put myself on to get into remission in the first place (nothing wild, just not quite so strict). For anybody interested, my HbA1c remains in the low to mid 30s (around 5.3%). That counts as ‘tight glycaemic control’. I’d like to say I’m going to the gym to celebrate but I have a filthy cold and am not going anywhere.
A trip to a sports physiotherapist has established what seems to be going on with my left knee. After a systematic assessment and rejection of possible causes of the problem, he reckons it’s down to wear and tear on the meniscus, possibly just because of aging. The upshot is that I can go back into the gym when I want, do as much upper-body resistance as I feel inclined, and also any cardio work except any running on the treadmill. In addition, I have some specific exercises designed to strengthen the knee. The downside is that, particularly at my age, it may be some time before I can consider running again, although he is reasonably confident that the time will come when I can.
Cheese:
Although I haven’t had my annual check yet, the general news is that my HbA1c remains in the normal range and therefore my diabetes remains in remission. This is despite my weight going up by around 2.5 kilograms based on this time last year. A period of weight-loss is called for, something that might be helped by getting back into the gym and/or swimming or possibly also by foregoing my taste for Stilton for a while. A more considered comment is in my latest Substack post linked here:
Progress continues to be made in working through some family lines, though the C19 Nottinghamshire family continues to be awkward. One of the problems is the divergence between social history and apparent genetic history and this is compounded by the way Ancestry suggests genetic matches.
The theory is that Ancestry (a) finds a genetic match (b) compares family trees to find common ancestors and (c) suggests a match. In principal this should work well, and a lot of the time it does. Where it gets less helpful is when either there is an error in one of the family trees it compares or where there is a problem with the underlying records from which people derive family trees – for example if a family are lying to officialdom or otherwise covering over the traces of illegitimacy or other shenanigans – which is what I continually encounter.
On this point, it is worth saying that the myth of ‘Victorian morality’ does not survive first contact with family history research. What is far more interesting to me are the many accepted ways that families would formally or informally absorb issues – for example an older couple might declare an illegitimate grandchild as one of their own children to census enumerators. We cannot know for sure in many (or most) cases the circumstances in which illegitimate (a term I dislike) children might be conceived – it might be teenage passion, it might be false promises from a bloke who then runs away. As the great Lizzie Higgins sang (What AVoice),
When my apron it hung low
My true love followed through frost and snow.
But now my apron is tae ma chin;
He passes me by and he’ll ne’er speir in.
It’s up and doon yon white hoose brae,
He’s called a strange girlie to his knee
An he’s telt her a tale that he’s once told me.
Oh I wish, I wish, oh I wish in vain,
I wish I was a maid again.
But a maid again I will never be
’Til a apple it grows on a orange tree.
However, the child might also come from rape or other coercion or incest. In the latter case, family shame and trauma would also lead to disguising the truth. Two centuries later, after the individuals are long gone, DNA technology throws up discrepancies in the established narrative.
It’s also worth noting that women in urban areas noted for poverty, such as Nottingham, might well (and often did if offical reports are to be believed) turn to sex work to make ends meet. I’m not saying that this was the case for any of my ancestors, simply that it would be wrong to dismiss the possibility.
I note with pleasure that people sharing the same name as my forebears (Faulks/Fawkes) in a small village in Nottinghamshire were noted for their skill in making Stilton, which explains a lot.
Quiet progress and a bit of a change this month. On the progress front, I started July with my first 10k run since 2009; I finish it with today’s 15k run, although ‘run’ is perhaps too grand a word. I’ve increased my capacity at various distances by a straightforward process of mixing it up and making sure I get appropriate rest days. I’m injury-averse (because they take longer to heal now) so I don’t try any heroics. I try to do 3 shorter runs during the week (usually 6.5km) plus a longer one at the weekend. My aim is to build out the weekend runs by a kilometre or so per week. As I’ve written previously, my general aim is to be at half-marathon fitness long before I run the Edinburgh Half Marathon next May.
Unsurprisingly, my weight has responded to the increased exercise levels and I’m now at my lightest since the mid-eighties. I’m comfortable enough with where I am now and expect that over the next couple of months my body will find its own equilibrium point/range. If I was being picky/vain it would be that I have some excess flab caused by losing so much weight. At my age, skin elasticity decreases. It should go away of its own accord if I give it time.
The hearing aids have arrived and I’m getting used to them. They definitely make a difference and I’m hearing a lot more high-frequency sounds again. It’s a bit weird because everything sounds as if the treble has been turned up – including my own voice. The guidance says it can be anything up to six weeks before the brain gets used to how to process the sound.
I ran my first 10,000 meters since 2009 at the weekend, picking out a route that took me from home and around the back of Murrayfield to Roseburn and back via a roundabout route. One hour 11 minutes. It took a bit more out of me than I expected, but I know I can do it now, which helps for the next one.
I ran it alone. There are advantages in having ‘running buddies’ and there’s a kind of fun in running with a large group, but Murakami was right to say that for many of us the pleasure is in the solitude and the ‘Zen’ aspects. Having said that, I’ve signed up to do a ‘proper’ 10k in Edinburgh on October 22nd, a couple of weeks after I turn 64. I may as well mark the return to 10k form with a t-shirt and a medal. I’ve also signed up for the Edinburgh Kilomathon on Sunday 7 April 2024: 13.1 k from Ocean Terminal. Both events finish inside Murrayfield Stadium.
By the time I run both of them, they should be well within my ability given the training schedule I’m putting together, assuming no injuries or mishaps along the way – always a risk with Edinburgh’s roads and pavements.
I bought some new running shoes – last year’s model, heavily discounted when this year’s model hit the shelves – and some odds and ends of ‘technical’ clothing found very cheap in either my local Cancer Research shop or as clearance items in TK-Max. For readers in the UK, Trespass, with its never-ending sale, is quite good for heavily-discounted wicking t-shirts, as is Mountain Warehouse.
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My most recent Substack post waded into a topic that I hadn’t thought much about until a stray thought occurred while I was out running. When I started on the low-carb route I unthinkingly bought into the notion of both beer (in the sense of real ale) and bread (in the sense of traditionally baked bread) as high-carb products. What occurred to me was that looking at the carb content of the ingredients missed out on the effects of fermentation. I haven’t completely made up my mind on this, and I have to be wary of settling on the answer that I want, but I reckon there is something more going on than received wisdom suggests.
I’ve been writing, though not as quickly or assiduously as I’d like. I have a number of projects bubbling under and decided to prioritise putting together a sequel collection to the stories in Coyote in the Corner. The first of these, coming in at a lengthy 57,000 words, is now complete in first draft. I like it, although at present the ending is rushed and only blocked in. I’ll let it ferment for a while as I’m writing other tales in the sequence then come back and sort it out. That’s more than half the book done, though, so I’m pleased with that.
One of the things I like about Coyote is the way I managed (I think) to imply a bigger picture from how the stories fitted together. That’s my aim for this one when it is done as well.
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