'Getting down, Roll?', 'Right down, thank you, Baz.'
A little smidgen of, jolly welcome, brightness came into The Stately Telly Topping Manor in early October, dearest bloggerisationism fiends. But, it didn't stay that way for very long (see below for all of the truly grizzly details). Both metaphorically and, indeed, literally.
Firstly, dear blog fiends, a sincere apology. There will not be an annual From The North Best and Worst TV Of 2024 essay and list this year as there has been every previous year on this blog since 2008. It's just too much work and, for reasons which will become clear later in this update, this blogger simply doesn't have the strength (or, indeed, the time or inclination) to do one this year. But, for what it's worth, had there been one, the winner - by a clear margin - would have been the fourth series of From The North favourite Slow Horses. Not only is a fifth series already in the can due for broadcast in 2025 (the trailer was played immediately following the final episode of this year's series), but it has also been widely reported that the Gary Oldman-fronted Apple TV+ espionage series has been recommissioned for a sixth series. This blogger is delighted by this news, as the series four finale might, just, be this blogger's favourite hour of extraordinary telly in a very long time. And then, the trailer went and sodding topped it, didn't it? This, dear blog reader, is good news. This blogger likes this good news. Bring, instantly, this blogger more good news of this kind so he may celebrate.
So, since that last bloggerisationism update a mere but thirty three days ago, this blogger has had a book published by those marvellously beautiful and sexually adventurous people at Telos Publishing. You've probably heard about it (Christ, this blogger has banged on about it often enough over the last three or four blog updates - here and here and here). However if, by any chance, you haven't heard about Return To The Vault Of Horror, go swiftly, here, to the publisher's website and order one, several or lots. Trust this blogger, it's the perfect gift for that special someone in your life ... that you don't particularly like. Meanwhile, it occurs to this blogger that he should probably be thanking many, many people for helping him to get his shit together enough to write the damned thing over the last few months. Specifically these people. Thank you. Thank you all.
Now, with that out of the way dear blog fiends, here are The Beatles - they were a popular beat combo of the 1960s (you might've heard of them) - out-and-about in 1968, searching for the ruddy 'ooligan tea-leaf wot pinched the bottom-half of Sir Paul's shirt.
On a somewhat-related topic, this blogger will Never Understand why more people, you know, don't.
This blogger had a really nice mid-day kip one day early in October after a morning of exertions whilst The Stately Telly Topping Manor weekly washing was, then, an on-going issue. He woke up feeling like a new man. But, sadly one wasn't available. So, instead, this was the afternoon's Stately Telly Topping Manor viewing. After all, what else y'gonna watch on Sitarday? 'Oh, dey do dough, don't dey dough?'
And, here we have a, rather hip-and-groovy looking Peter Cushing in what appears to be a very tasty suede jacket (gear!) along with his friend and frequent co-star Christopher Lee, his wife and daughter on the set of what this blogger claims in Return To The Vault Of Horror to be one of his six favourite movies of all-time, Dracula AD 1972. Mind you, he may have been lying.
Meanwhile, we've also recently witnessed the arrival at The Stately Telly Topping Manor of two of this blogger's favourite European horror movies on Blu-ray. Which was nice.
All of which brings us, dearest blog fiends, to that extra-special (and, increasingly lengthy) part of From The North dedicated to this blogger's horribly on-going medical malarkey. Or, strictly speaking, malarkeys as there have been - and continue to be - several of them. For those dear blog fiends who haven't been following this epic adventure, almost three years in the making, it goes like this: Keith Telly Topping spent some weeks around Christmas 2021 and into the New Year of 2022 feeling pure dead rotten; he experienced an alarming five day in the RVI; was discharged; received some B12 injections; then more of them; somewhat recovered his missing appetite; got an initial diagnosis; had a consultant's meeting; continued to suffer from fatigue and insomnia; endured a (second) endoscopy; had another consultation; got (unrelated) toothache; had an extraction; which then took ages to heal; had another consultation; spent a week where nothing remotely health-related occurred; received further B-12 injections; had an echocardiogram; was subject to more blood extractions; made another hospital visit; saw the unwelcome insomnia and torpor continue; received yet more blood tests; had a rearranged appointment; suffered his worst period yet with fatigue. Until the following week. And then, the week after that. Oh, the fatigue, dear blog reader. The depressing, ceaseless fatigue. He then had a go on the Blood-Letting Machine; got another sick note; had an assessment; was given his fourth COVID jab; got some surprising-but-welcome news about his assessment; had the results of his annual diabetes check-up; had another really bad week with the fatigue; followed by one with the sciatica; then one with the chronic insomnia; and, one with a plethora of general cold-related grottiness. Which continued over the 2022 Christmas period and into 2023. There was that whole 'slipping in The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House bath and putting his knee through the side' thing; a period of painful night-time leg and foot cramps; getting some new spectacles; returning to the East End pool; only to discover that he remained as weak of a kitten in the water. Or, indeed, out of it; felt genuinely wretched; experienced a nasty bout of gastroenteritis; had a visit from an occupational therapist; did the 'accidentally going out of the gaff in his slippers' malarkey; saw the return of the dreaded insomnia and the dreaded return of the fatigue. Had the latest tri-monthly prickage; plus, yet more sleep disturbances; a further bout of day-time retinology; a bout of extreme exhaustion; picked up a cold virus in the week that he got his latest Covid and influenza inoculations; got through the entire Department Of Baths malarkey (and then, its sequel) whilst suffering from significant, on-going, back spasms. Received the welcome news that his latest test for cancer of the colon had come back negative. Got scheduled for yet more blood tests. And, during one of those, suffered 'a nasty turn' and ended up spending two days and a night back in the RVI.
October, in fact, turned into a complete and total bloody horrorshow (and drag) in relation to yer actual Keith Telly Topping's general well-being. September, of course, had previously included the 'fainting and spending a night in hospital' malarkey mentioned in the last From The North update. That experience, however, now seems like but a mild summer breeze in comparison to the Force Twelve Tempest that was October in this blogger's life.
It all started promisingly enough, too. This blogger's six-monthly diabetes check-up, following the passing-out daftness a couple of weeks earlier, occurred in mid-October. There was still, at that stage, nothing solid on the cause of the latter malarkey (not that this blogger was particularly expecting any, it just seemed at the time to be 'one of those things'); otherwise, it was a decent(ish), thoroughly routine, session with lovely Nurse Adrienne. Weight still heading in the right direction, down four kilograms; the wee-wee test was fine; so was this blogger's blood pressure; bloods were taken (as usual) and this blogger was told he would find out how they were in three weeks when he had his follow-up with Nurse Ami. Of course, those three weeks subsequently turned into a bloody nightmare of quite epic proportions (albeit, one which included further, significant, weight loss which is never a bad thing, no matter what the circumstances may be). Keith Telly Topping was also amused to discover that he now gets the full dementia memory test as part of his diabetes check-up (can you name the twelve months of the year backwards? et cetera). 'How've you been over the last few months?' Nurse Adrienne asked. 'Not bad. Surviving. Wrote a book ...' this blogger replied, accurately although, if truth be told a bit smugly. That was just asking for trouble, so it was. And, boy, did he get some.
Because, that was as good as October got. From that very day (14 October) onwards, as it happens, everything which could go wrong, did. 'I've been as sick as a dog for the last week and I'm still not feeling over-clever even as we speak,' this blogger told his Facebook fiends on 22 October. 'The cold has turned nasty, the cough's just sort of lingered and, since the back end of last week, I've had both sickness and diarrhoea. I've been consisting almost exclusively on tea and coffee, cuppa soup and fruit juice and spending lots of time in bed with several hot water bottles, watching DVD box-sets in the hope of inducing sleep. Hopefully, I should be able to get myself pulled together by this time next week when I've got another dinner date with Young Malcolm planned. For the moment, it's a case of trying not to pass out or spew up each time I have a coughing fit. Which is great fun.' Amazingly (possibly amusingly) that was merely the start of all the fun and games.
Yer actual KTT continued to feel as a rotten as a frog in a blender. It got so bad that, a couple of days later, the lovely Doctor Simon from the local medical centre was required to attend The Stately Telly Topping Manor for an emergency home visit. He suggested what this blogger had already half-suspected, that yer actual was suffering from a really nasty dose of Norovirus (popularly known as 'Winter Vomiting Thingy Whatsit'). Or, possibly, worst-case-scenario, gastroenteritis or ecoli or salmonella but, since the treatment for all four is, essentially, the same - liquid, rest, more liquid, even more rest, absolutely no antibiotics cos they'll do no good at all and, possibly, some harm - it made little difference to the diagnosis. Doctor Simon suggested that this blogger had been 'very unlucky' in contracting a particularly virulent form of the lurgi as it usually comes and goes within a minimum of three to a maximum of five days. This had already been going on for close to a fortnight at that stage. The symptoms were a constant nausea, albeit with only intermittent vomiting (mostly just a sort of foamy, noxious phlegm as there was little-or-nothing solid for this blogger to actually bring up); constant (and particularly aggressive) diarrhoea, to the point where, as barely nothing solid had crossed the Telly Topping lips, it was merely flood-after-dispiriting-flood of shitty brown water; a very tender stomach and a feeling of being bloated shortly after anything entered this blogger's system (and, given that this blogger was drinking lots of liquids trying to - unsuccessfully as it turned out - keep hydrated, that was pretty much all the time). Apart from the odd bowl of milky cereal and a few biscuits, Keith Telly Topping was existing, as noted, on hot and cold beverages (although, bonus, he discovered a partiality for milky tea with lemon juice, something he'd've run a mile from previously). Also, this blogger had a nasty incident in the early hours of that Saturday morning (his birthday - not that he celebrates them these days) when getting up to have a pee. Moving into the kitchen for a drink of water to quench his parched-dry throat, he had another, sudden, unexpected dizzy turn and ended up sprawled out in the hallway, sandwiched between the filing cabinet and the bookcase (how he managed to avoid smacking his head wide open on the concrete floor remains a genuine mystery). This blogger did manage to crawl back to bed thereafter and, mercifully, that had - at that point - been the only instance of such rank fainty-daftness occurring. This blogger was assured by Doctor Simon that the cough was 'wholly unrelated' to the stomach virus issues and Doctor Simon wished for this blogger to get himself a chest x-ray at the RVI once he was feeling well enough to travel, 'just to be on the safe side.' So, all-in-all, Keith Telly Topping'd had better weeks …
Having continued to feel wretched all the following week too and having had two further (really quite distressing) fainting and falling incidents, one on Thursday night another on Friday late-afternoon (the day of publication for Return To The Vault Of Horror as it happens), this blogger felt it necessary to dial nine-nine-nine and, to explain that he was feeling, in the words of Neil Pye, 'really terrible, actually'. What with the sickness, diarrhoea, coughing, stomach pains, dizziness, fainting et cetera. The symptoms were no longer pointing solely to Norovirus but, rather, to something even more serious. The emergency lady was marvellous, she calmed this blogger down, told him that as he is in at least two 'at risk' health categories (diabetes and anaemia) and because he lives alone and the fainting could, potentially, be very serious indeed, he'd done the right thing in calling. She said that she would put all of the details of our conversation into the system and that an ambulance should be with this blogger 'in a couple of hours.' This blogger thanked her - genuinely - and then, somewhat dizzily, went for a lie down to await the arrival of help.
Less than but twenty minutes later, just as this blogger was nodding off, there was a knock at the Stately Telly Topping Manor front door. Taking his - hastily assembled - overnight bag and wearing just a t-shirt, leggings and bedsocks, a dressing down and slippers - this blogger got downstairs to the door expecting to leave straight away, only to find a paramedic, alone, in a car who'd merely been told there was a job for him but not what the symptoms actually were or anything else (including this blogger's name). So, this blogger had to explain everything again. Then, when the paramedic wanted to do a few basic, preliminary tests (an EKG and a temperature reading, for two examples), we had to do it there on the doorstep because there was no way this blogger was able to get back up the stairs at that point. Eventually the paramedic, who was called Paul and was very nice and extremely professional, decided that this was, indeed, a worthy case for A&E and asked if this blogger wished to wait for a full ambulance team or he could take me in his car, though it would be 'a bit less comfortable.' This blogger, feeling that speed was both of the essence and more important than comfort, chose the latter.
We arrived at the RVI and this blogger was seen quickly (like, within twenty minutes) by a Nurse Nicola for an initial triage assessment. Keith Telly Topping explained his medical history, having also brought with him a copy of his current medication list (always a good idea in such situations, I've found), mentioned his recent, albeit brief, hospitalisation and the visit from his own doctor a few days earlier and the possibility of Norovirus or similar, but also suggested that the majority of the symptoms felt, uncannily, like those he'd experienced before being diagnosed with anaemia for the first time in early 2022. Only, this time, much, much worse. However that was quickly ruled out as the bloodwork showed no obvious anaemic distress. Nevertheless, the fainting was clearly something to be concerned about so, Keith Telly Topping was put into the RVI's A&E Waiting Room to, eventually, be seen by a doctor. The wait time, he was informed, would be roughly five hours.
And let this blogger tell you, dearest blog fiends, five hours in a major city A&E department on a Thursday night/Friday morning, particularly over Hallow'een, you really do see both the very best and extreme worst of humanity all rolled up into a - very messy - package. In the case of the latter it was a seemingly endless parade of barely-dressed or daftly-dressed (well, this was Hallow'een, to be fair) young women mostly (plus one or two young men), who'd either drank or 'taken' something which they probably shouldn't have and we're now experiencing 'a bit of a reaction.' And wanted the whole world to know all about it. All whilst hard-working, underpaid medical staff rushed about with people who were actually, properly, ill, wrapped in insulation blankets awaiting admission.
Having sat there as a mute (and, by now very dizzy, disorientated and thoroughly miserable) observer to all this crass malarkey, yer actual Keith Telly Topping was, finally, seen (almost to-the-minute five hours after coming in, so good on the NHS for punctuality). The lovely Doctor Rhiannon, listened patiently as this blogger went through all of his many symptoms yet again - for the fourth time that evening to four different people - and, after some additional checks, she felt that it was probably worth admitting Keith Telly Topping overnight 'for observation'.
It was no surprise, what with 'Still Ill' remaining to this day this blogger's favourite song by Them Smiths, that Keith Telly Topping was. in the early hours of Friday morning - for the second time in less than a month and the third time in under three years - back as an in-patient at the good-old, world-famous RVI Observation Unit. Feeling (and looking) absolutely shite. Or, at least, more absolutely shite than he normally does. See what this blogger means? Rough as a badger's minge, no?
At least he had his own room this time around. You take whatever little victories you can get in life, frankly.
Having thrown together an overnight bag whilst waiting for the ambulance to arrive - including a change of underwear, a spare t-shirt, plus his phone and charger and an electric razor - this blogger remembered to add a little light hospital reading material for times between what now promised to be an endless round of blood tests, blood-sugar tests, kidney function tests and blood pressure measuring. Enough to cure anyone of any ailments, the publicity blurb for Return To The Vault Of Horror suggests - and whom is this blogger to argue?
That day, incidentally, this blogger was being positively inundated on Facebook with congratulations from the first purchasers of the book, many providing photographic evidence they really, genuinely, had probably paid their hard-earned money and bought the damned thing. Here's for instance, is Keith Telly Topping's most excellent fiend Mad Ken with his own copy. All of which inundation, along with lots of still-unanswered birthday greetings from the weekend previous, were going ignored as this blogger simply didn't have the energy to reply. Or, even to click 'like'!
Friday afternoon, this blogger was catching up with some of the missing shut-eye from the night in an A&E Waiting Room, deep in his kip whilst hooked up to a drip (Keith Telly Topping has certainly been called one often enough) when he suddenly got shaken awake and told that he was being moved - as excepted. But, not to a different ward within the RVI, rather to a different hospital - The Freeman, five miles across the city. Queue, being taken off the drip, a very hasty grabbing of the overnight bag and its contents and a helter-skelter ride through rush hour traffic to the Freeman, a hospital that this blogger was very familiar with - the late Mama Telly Topping having spent much of her final two or three hospital stays there - but this was the first time that Keith Telly Topping had actually been a patient there as opposed to a visitor. This blogger was in a specialist observation ward for stomach, kidney and raspatory ailments on the seventh (top) floor, though he still had his own room and the staff seemed every bit as nice as the little darlings he'd previously encountered in his few hours at the RVI.
'Why a different hospital?' asked this blogger's American mate Ben, not unreasonably. Availability of beds, this blogger speculated. It was a specialist unit that this blogger had gone to; to be fair, the RVI also had one of those but if both have, say, twenty to thirty beds each but one is full and the other one has a spare place, you go to where the spare place is. '[The] Freeman is quite nice (as hospitals go). Food is better than the RVI,' this blogger's Facebook fiend Jennifer advised him as he was in-transit. And, she was certainly not incorrect on either score. This blogger's first meal there that Friday evening consisted of Cream of Minestrone soup with soft noodles, chicken in wholegrain mustard sauce with wild rice and jam sponge pudding and custard. Plus a steaming hot cup of milky Rosie and a (small) packet a Shortbread biscuits. Keith Telly Topping couldn't come close to finishing it all, of course - some cereal aside, that lot was the first sustained solid food this blogger had eaten in about three weeks.
And, whilst it seems utterly - and needlessly - churlish to criticise pretty much any aspect of the treatment this blogger received whilst at the excellent - and, rightly, famous - RVI, there was one disappointment; this blogger missed lunch shortly before the crosstown move came about - 'do you want a sandwich for lunch?' asked the lady handing out the nosh. 'Have you got anything else?' this blogger asked, explaining that he wasn't really eating solids at that particular moment. 'Well, you could have had soup ... but it's cold,' she said, with seemingly genuine sadness. I'm not sure exactly what this blogger was supposed to do with that information. Provide her with a list of wholesalers where pots and pans in which soup can be, you know, heated up, possibly? This blogger let it pass with a smile and a dismissive gesture. And, within an hour, he was gone.
'Medical professionals across the country respect The Freeman,' this blogger's fiend and former neighbour, Young Jim who's 'in the industry', advised on Facebook. 'You're in good hands.' This blogger confirmed that he certainly appeared to be early on Saturday morning, adding: 'They do jolly nice breakfasts too. Just sayin'!
Thanks to the delightful Nurse Sree, this blogger was soon, once more, back on the drip. Getting a diluted diet of Potassium and Magnesium plus other assorted electrolytes and dioralytes which were, at that time, missing-in-action from Keith Telly Topping's seriously dehydrated system.
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Wednesday was much better, however. A relaxing, chill day at home, another early (and a much less stressful) night with a solid, uninterrupted five-to-six hours kip either side of a couple of, ahem, wee moments. 
