My ear problems led on to a brief conversation with Jan this afternoon in which I mentioned that if I had to choose, I would rather lose my sight than my hearing. Jan felt very strongly the opposite, she got a little distressed at the thought of losing her sight. My opinion is that though I would miss my sight a lot, my two biggest ‘uses’ of it, reading and computing, could be replaced or at least achieved without sight. But if I lost my hearing there is no way to replace music. I would be really, really upset to know that I could never hear music again. I have probably listened on average to three or four albums a day every day for at least the last four or five years. I currently have around 400 – 500 CDs (counting doubles and triples as individual CDs) in a huge range of styles from classical to punk, jazz to country, easy listening to nu metal, rap to trance, and everything in between. In fact to give you an idea of my musical taste, I have dumped my local CDDB database to this page. There are 480 CDs in that list and it is not complete, but does include CDs I don’t own. As you can see I really would miss music if I had to lose my hearing.
What do you think? Given one of those hypothetical dilemmas; you must choose to keep either your hearing or your sight, which would you keep, and why?

I forgot to mention, I went to see my doctor yesterday morning, and he prescribed some oral antibiotics and stronger painkillers. I decided not go into the office, but did some work from home.
For the rest of Wednesday, my ear wasn’t too painful, though I could tell when the painkillers started to run out. But it was very swollen most of the day and my hearing was affected all day. Quite disconcerting.
That led on to a conversation with Jan which I will discuss in my next post…

The pain in my ear got to be too much today, and I’ve come home early. Strangely, the pain went away for the journey home! I guess the cooling effect of the wind (I cycled home), coupled with the re-distribution of blood around my body made the swelling go down. I could also hear better once I had set off. I realised that it had been almost closed up in the office. Now I’m back home it’s starting to swell again and the pain is coming back.
It’s very odd. I’m not normally a sickly person, I try not to let anything stop me doing what I want to do. But this constant pressure along with the sudden sharp pain, and the almost constant noise have been quite irritating, and have made it hard to concentrate.
Ho hum, back to the doctor in the morning.

I took the morning off work and went to see my doctor. He examined my ear and decided that there was probably a boil and that it was extremely swollen causing the pain and the noise. He has prescribed some antibiotic ear drops. I picked those up on my way back home.
After a quick coffee, I went into work (cycling to the station). I did manage to work for the rest of the day but it is quite painful at times.

I saw this BBC story Rebranding puts black marks against UK flag, this morning. Despite the negative implications in the title, this is a positive story. In fact given the content of the story the title is a sick joke!

“Britain’s national flag – the union jack – has been given the makeover treatment, in the hope of reflecting a more modern society.
It’s become the marketing executive’s remedy for any organisation’s ills. From BT to BP, the Labour Party to the Lottery, hardly a business or institution has escaped the rebranding bug.
Now moves are afoot to redesign that most sacred of British hallmarks – the union flag.”

The story is also up to the usual poor standard of grammar and coherency in journalism. Just from the quotes above, has it already been ‘given the makeover’ or are ‘moves afoot’ to change it? It goes on to say “A campaign is being launched to modernise…”, but then shows a picture of the proposed new flag.
The article alternates between calling it the Union Flag and the Union Jack. A little research shows that either is correct but a little consistency would have helped.
In all the story is interesting, and in theory a good idea with good intentions, but as is pointed out, and some of the reader comments agree, unlikely to come to anything.

I had another day off sick today (tummy troubles would be polite). I managed to get some work done, but not a huge amount…

I just thought I would catch up on my ongoing attempt to get fit and healthy. A few weeks ago I started taking my bike in to work — cycling from home to the train station, train station to office and back again in the evening. That’s about five miles a day. Last week, I started cycling all the way home in the evening. That puts my mileage up to ten miles a day; fifty miles per week! That was hard work but by the end of the week I’d got my time down from 45 minutes to 36. It also saves me lots of money!
The no smoking has been going fine. This is now my seventh week without a smoke. I really only have one ‘problem’ time — 11am in the office. It still get a strong craving of some description at that time. It’s not really that I want a cigarette, it’s more that I know I would be having one at that time if I hadn’t stopped. I don’t know why that time is so strong, and it is only when I am in the office too. Weekends are fine. The rest of the time I just have to consciously keep myself occupied. Mostly that seems to involve drinking coffee or eating. Otherwise I have to be reading, or on the computer, or something. If my hands are idle I get a little ‘twitchy’! Sometimes really twitchy.
So, with no alcohol, no cigarettes, cycling 50 miles a week, and watching what I eat, I should soon be feeling really fit and healthy.
Bizarrely, I’ve been off work ill today!