Down under II

Your body is a little factory, full of moving parts you know nothing about. So is mine. 

We all have a fair grasp of what's happening on the outside - heads, hands, genitals, feet and so on, although even they do strange things sometimes. I have no idea why my right leg keeps trying to do the elastico, when it knows I trip over the ball every time.

But our insides are pretty much unknown territory. So when the doc tells you the plunger of your hypothalamus has stopped reciprocating so take these tablets and come back in a month, we say thanks and go away.

But as time passes, I have to tell you, certain parts of your insides draw themselves to your attention. Down in the nether regions, guys, between your scrotum and anus is a featureless stretch that you never see or think about, as a carefree youth. So when you start getting pains there, as I did when I was 40, you have no idea why and you visit the doc.

"It's your prostate," he says and you go "So that's where it lives." 

You have heard of it, because prostate cancer killed Frank Zappa, and you knew it was something to do with the reproductive system. Now suddenly you've a good reason to find out more.

The prostate's job, it seems, is to make a milky fluid, mix it with sperm and insert the resulting semen into the urethra, bound for parts unknown, during ejaculation. 

A healthy human prostate is slightly larger than a walnut and occupies a space just below the bladder and wrapped around the urethra - the tube that carries urine to a toilet bowl or beer can, depending where you are when nature calls.

Which brings us to the first sign that something's not right with the walnut. Nature calls more often. As the years advance the little guy grows to the size of a tomato, an apple, even a grapefruit, and starts squishing your bladder and reducing its capacity. It's called benign prostatic hyperplasia and it's a nuisance. But it's not dangerous.

Prostate cancer is, and the symptoms can be similar. To get some idea which one you've got, the doc feels your prostate with his finger, and at this point viewers of a nervous disposition might want to look away.

Because there are two ways in to the walnut, as you can see from the image up above (that's not me, by the way). One is through the anus, the other up the urethra, and here's where nature for once gives us a break, guys. 

Because I'll guarantee if the urethra was wide enough to take it, that's where your doc would be sticking his vaseline-lubricated wiggly little finger. Think about that.  

But it's not wide enough, thank god, so he goes up the anus instead. Which is intrusive and a bit disturbing, but not in the least painful. Once he's in there and feeling for hard bumpy bits on the outside of your prostate, it's fine. I recommend thinking about the football scores and avoiding eye contact till it's over.

When I was forty what I had, it turned out, was prostatitis, which is one of those medical terms that means nothing. It's not cancer and it's not hyperplasia. It could be inflammation or infection. Basically the prostate is irritated, for some reason, and is telling you about it. So the doc gives you antibiotics and either they fix it or time does, and you forget about it for another 20 years. 

Then a few months ago mine gets irritated again and I leave it for a while then phone to make an appointment. "The only doctor available this week is new in the practice - Dr Davidson," the receptionist says. "That's fine," I say and toddle up to the surgery the next day at the appointed hour. 

It feels different this time, so I'm a wee bit worried as I sit in the waiting-room, reading Country Life and sincerely hoping the guy on the cover, carrying a gun and two dead pheasants, has a prostate the size of his brainless head. 

"Mr Blane," the receptionist calls and I head along the corridor, knock, enter and do a double-take. Dr Davidson is a slim, short-haired blonde woman, who looks about 15 but is probably 25. 

"Have a seat," she says. "What can I do for you?" 

Normally slow and steady, rather than lightning-fast, my brain zips ahead to the next five minutes and acts decisively for once. 

"I've come for my flu injection," I tell her.

Ball game II

Al  has had more than his fair share of ailments in the past 30 years, so it's easier to list those that haven't afflicted him than those that have. He's avoided measles, mastitis, nappy rash and period pains. That's about it.

Pretty much everything else you can think of he's had. Frozen shoulder, runner's knee, collapsed lung, tennis elbow, coxsackie virus, myalgic encephalomyelitis, colds, flu, pneumonia and hospital superbugs that damn near killed him. Oh yeah and depression.

But his latest malady, which I notice when we're changing at the gym for our Wednesday workout, is bigger than any of those.

It's bad form, of course, to show an interest in people's tackle in a male changing-room. A fleeting glance is acceptable, even expected, but repeated peeks or a prolonged stare with raised eyebrows will get you complained about. Or propositioned.

So normally I wouldn't dream of doing a double-take and a sharp intake of breath. But I can't help it. Al's equipment is a magnet for my eyes. I get away with it because there's no one else in the room, we've seen each other naked loads of times, neither of us is gay and there's a good reason for my current fascination with his testicles.

"You've noticed," he says.

"Hard to miss," I say.

"I'm up here," he says.

"Sorry," I say. "Can't take my eyes off it. What happened? You catch it in a door?"

"Nope. It gradually went that way over a couple of weeks. I didn't notice at first. Then it became obvious. One testicle much bigger than the other."

"You going to the doc's or will you buy a wheelbarrow for it?"

"I've been. He gave me antibiotics and said it would shrink back down again."

"You should have asked for something to make its mates grow big as well."

"I did. Stony-faced pill-pusher never cracked a smile."

"Probably hear stuff like that all the time when you're a balls doctor."

"I guess," he says, pulling his shorts on. "He also sent me for an ultrasound scan, just to be safe. I got a letter the following week warning me, in bold letters, that it might be done by a female. That got me worried."

"I can see why. How long is it since a woman saw you naked? Twenty years?"

"More like fifty," he says. "So I kept my fingers crossed that nothing would come up during the examination."

"Did it?" I say, as we head out the door towards the gym.

"Not a twitch," he says. "Which was a relief and a disappointment. There were two females doing the examination. One rubbing jelly on my genitals and moving them around to get a better view. The other studying it all on the screen above my head." 

"Must have felt exposed," I say.

"And then some," he says. "'I can't see a thing to worry about,' the female at the screen says. 'Me neither,' says her friend down below, and I catch a wee smile on her stupid face."

"Embarrassing," I say, giving him a comforting slap on the shoulder.

"Humiliating," Al says. "It's the last time I let a woman look at my tackle, I can tell you."

I glance down. "That's what you think, son," I say. "You're going to need a bigger pair of shorts."

"Bugger," he says and turns on his heel and heads back to the changing-room.

Some science of swollen testicles 
1.  Orchitis is the term for inflammation and swelling of one or both testicles, caused by infection.

2. Men with smaller testicles are more likely to feed and bath the baby. 

There's nothing wrong with surly

Stu Kidd at the Rio. (Photo by Dug Blane)

"I'm not going in there again," I tell my son as we're driving along Radnor Street looking for a good place to grab a bite on his birthday. 

"Guy behind the counter's a surly git and he sticks five percent on the bill if you pay by card."

"Nothing wrong with surly," he tells me and goes off on one. 

"It's a Scottish tradition. It's how you know you're not in New York. You don't get everybody telling you to have a nice day. I don't want total strangers telling me to have a nice day. I'm not their friend. I don't know them. They don't know me. I've got my shopping. I've paid for it. I just want to get out of there. Have a nice day yourself, you artificially cheery little twat."

He stops to draw breath. "You all right now?" I ask. 

"I'm fine," he says. "How about the Rio? They've live bands at the weekend, so we go there often. It's friendly. Stu Kidd plays there a lot."

So I turn right and head up Argyle Street, past the Kelvingrove and find a parking space outside St Peter's Primary. The Rio is jumping when we get inside, but the waitress, who looks about twelve, finds us a table not too close to the door, since it's a chilly morning, and right next to a heater, which is cosy, and we settle down to study the menu. 

My sister's looking good and seems perkier than usual, without the strain lines round her eyes that she's had for a while. "I had the carpet taken up and vinyl put down," she says. "I'm allergic to house mites, I've discovered."

"Seriously?" my son says. "What do they do?"

"Make me tense," she says. "I'd started swearing at other drivers and tailgating them."

"Because you were pissed off with the house mites?" my son says.

"Some chemical they produce was making me stressed," she says. "But I'm fine now. Dead relaxed even in the car."

"Your yin and yang look well balanced to me," he says. "Speaking of which my pal Jawad is into this whole middle class lifestyle thing - wife, sales job, beamer, house in the country. Now he's bought himself a giant dog called Paul. 

"No hang on. It's John I think. George. Adam. Rex. Rover." He chunters to a halt, looking puzzled.

"Bruce!" he shouts and the woman at the next table jumps a foot and chokes on her coffee. "I'm sorry," he says to the waitress walking past, who gives him a raised eyebrow and a tentative smile.

"I have trouble with names," he tells us. "They tested me at College recently and said I was smart but my short-term memory's useless."

"Why were they testing you?" I say.

"I don't remember," he says.

I take a sip of coffee and look about. Busy café with lots of women and little toddlers wandering around. Clatter of plates and heels. Hiss of the coffee machine. Nice feel to the place. 

"You got any mushrooms?" my son says, shoving his food around on the plate. 

"They're under your egg," I tell him. "Maybe chemistry's your problem, same as Helen. Could be food additives. They cause headaches, hair loss, acne, impotence and brain damage."

"Is there evidence for any of that? he says. "Or are you just Daily Mailing it?"

"Less of that," my sis says. "I get the Daily Mail."

"I don't get any news," he says. "Don't have a TV. Don't read the papers. No idea what's going on in the world. Which means I'm much happier than you guys. Death and disaster don't get beamed into my brain every day."

He spears a pensive mushroom. "Only trouble is I'll be the last to hear about the end of the world. Like an asteroid's headed for Earth or robots have replaced the humans and I'll be wandering the deserted streets alone. Hapless, gormless, clueless and doomed."

"It's happened already," I say. "All those people telling you to have a nice day are the first wave of the robots."

"You reckon?" he says.  

"Sure. In fact how do you know I'm not a robot? Or your aunty here. You could be the only human in this whole café."

I jerk my head and go "Bzzzt. Have a nice day," in a robot voice. "Exterminate! Exterminate!"

"Pillock," he says and stabs a surly sausage with his fork.

Four star fuel

"You have a frugal way of feeding yourself," I tell my son, as I survey the trays of sprouting seeds laid out on his kitchen surfaces.

"Peasant food," he says. "Cheap and tasty."

"Nourishing too, I'm guessing."

"Certainly," he says. "Fast-fry the seed-sprouts, chuck an egg on top, also fried, and eat it with a bannock. Sets you up for the day."

"What's a bannock?" I say.

"One of these," he says, sliding a tray out of the oven, bulging with rough-looking, honey-coloured, domed discs, like biscuits on steroids.

"How do you make them?" I ask, picking one up and biting. It's dry and crumbly in texture, savoury and satisfying to taste.

"Oats, water, salt, bit of baking soda," he says. "Grab a few handfuls and pop them in the oven for 20 minutes. Use them like bread or rolls. Oats make you feel better than wheat."

"In what way?"

"Lighter and less bloated," he says. "They're easier to digest, I think. So what you up to these days?"

"Did something outstandingly stupid yesterday," I tell him. "It looks like the last traces of intelligence are fleeing fast, leaving just a few sparks randomly flickering between wasted neurons in the dying embers of my ageing brain."

"At least you can still talk bollocks," he says.

"One of the skills dementia only enhances," I say.

"Bleak future if it's true though," he says.

"I could become a banker," I say.

"Not if there's still some sparks," he says. "You'd be way too smart. What was it you did?"

"Filled my car with diesel instead of petrol."

"That is dumb," he says. "But diesel pumps are bigger so they can't fit a petrol tank."

"They are," I say. "I noticed it wasn't going in well. So I shoved it as far as it would go, then checked underneath that it wasn't running out. Managed to get a full tank in."

He shakes his head. "You didn't realise you'd the wrong fuel line?"

"That's the worst part," I say. "I could tell there was something wrong, but it just didn't click. I haven't done anything that stupid since I put the washing in the fridge and the beer in the tumble-dryer."

"Warm beer and cool pants?" he says. "That could work. I'm guessing your engine didn't, with a tankful of diesel?"

"Oh it did," I say. "Went for half a mile, right into the busiest part of town. Then it made a horrible noise and packed in, causing an obstruction and making me very unpopular."

"I can see why," he says. 

"Cost me £200 in the end, to get towed to a mechanic, diagnosed - since I still didn't know what I'd done - the tank drained, the system flushed and refilled, and the engine restarted. Plus a day's work lost."

"What a wally," he says.

"What a wally," I say, clearing the crumbs of bannock from my plate and getting up to leave. "I got to go earn some money now to pay for yesterday's fiasco."

"Have some more bannocks," he says, lifting four from the oven, wrapping them in greased paper and handing them to me. "Get one of those inside you every morning for a few days and you'll feel a lot better."

"You think so?" I say.

"I'm certain," he says. "Eating normal bread has the same effect as forcing diesel into a petrol engine."

"You feel stupid?" I say.

"It causes an obstruction and horrible noises," he says. "And makes you unpopular."

Sausages

Al takes global warming personally. So his house is as warm and welcoming as the dark side of the moon. Not that there is a dark side of the moon, despite the over-hyped Floyd album, but you get the drift. Arctic, Baltic, bloody freezing.

"Do you ever heat this place?" I ask over breakfast, the morning after we'd chatted in the Bon Accord and he gave me a bed for the night.

"Of course," he says. "My central heating comes on between December and February every year."

"So that's like ... January?"

"Pretty much," he says.

"You heat the house one month out of twelve? Why don't you freeze the rest of the year, the way I'm freezing now?"

"You're not freezing," he says. "You're slightly below the temperature your pampered adult self has got used to. You've gone soft from a surfeit of cocoa, women and central heating, You must have been tougher as a boy."

"I wasn't," I tell him. "I was harassed by hypothermia. We had one coal fire in the living-room. The rest of the house was shrouded in ice. You took a sledge and huskies to get to the bathroom. My dad stepped into the hall one winter and froze with his hand out reaching for a book. We used him as a coatstand till he thawed out in spring."

Al puts a sizzling plate of hash browns, beans, tomatoes, scrambled eggs and vegetarian sausages in front of me, accompanied by coffee in a white mug with black lettering that says: "The wind moans, like a long wail from some despairing soul shut out in the awful storm."

"Guy that wrote that died of apoplexy brought on by overwork," I tell him.

"Serves him right," he says. "It's a present from my mum. She said it reminded her of me. How's the breakfast?"

"Hot, huge and unexpected," I say. "Like the climate."

"It's not funny," he says, waving a forkful of food at me. "The planet's screwed and you're sat scornfully scoffing sausages. If we all turned our heating down, civilisation might survive."

"But we won't," I tell him. "It's the Tragedy of the Commons. Land owned by all gets ruined by a few. Human nature. So you might as well turn your heating up before frostbite eliminates my extremities. It's pointless. It's tokenism."

He bites half the greasy brown cylinder on his fork and points the other half at me. "Why are you eating fake sausages full of fluff and grass instead of a man's meal like this?" he asks me. "It's pointless. It's tokenism."

He lays his fork on the plate, stands up, loosens his belt and drops his trousers and I start back in sudden fear. 

Long, thick and blue, it stretches almost to his ankles. I've never seen anything like it. "My God," I say. "What's that?"

"Thermal underwear," he tells me. "It's the future."

Ball game

Drove past a roadside sign the other day that reminded me how I got started writing for a living. "It's cancer that should be scared now," the sign read and I couldn't help thinking of a piece on testicular cancer I wrote 15 years ago and didn't get published.

"Cancer is serious," my writing tutor assured me. "It is not a suitable subject for humour."

"Well I think it is, my po-faced pedagogue," I told him. "Those are precisely the subjects we should be laughing at." 

Or I would have done if I'd had the nerve. If we laugh only at trivial aspects  of life, it'll be like an evening with Michael McIntyre that lasts 70 years.

"Whole point of humour is to raise your spirits," I say later to Susan. "So you can be funny about anything - death, disease, divorce, religion, suspicious lumps on your balls you don't think were there before but aren't sure as it's a while since you felt them."

"For once I agree with you," she says.

"So would you like the job?" I ask.

"What job?" she says.

"Making me laugh and feeling my testicles once a month for little lumps that shouldn't be there. Ideally not at the same time."

"What do I get out of it?" she says.

"The pleasure of seeing me happy, relaxed and free from fear."

"I'd rather have ten quid a time."

"That's five quid a testicle. Seems steep."

"You can't put a price on peace of mind," she tells me. "It's my best offer. If you don't like it do it yourself."

"I can't," I admit. "It makes me squeamish. I get this stringy stuff between my finger and thumb that feels like frog spawn. The idea of frog spawn in my scrotum makes me sick."

"What a wuss," Susan says. "I might be talking myself out of a job here, but you needn't worry about that. It's your epididymis."

"My whaty whatymis?"

"Your epididymis. It's normal. You've got two. They transport sperm from the testicles on their first faltering steps into the big wide world."

"I always wondered how that happened," I say. "Well that's a weight off my mind. I can do the job myself now, thanks. I don't need you."

"You sure?" she says.

"What haven't you told me?"

"Nothing," she says and starts whistling, a sure sign that she's lying.

"Let me have it," I say and she does.

"Well the epididymis is long."

"How long?"

"If you ran out of string to wrap your Christmas parcels, you'd have more than enough in your scrotum."

"So what we talking about - couple of feet? I don't do many presents."

"Try twenty."

"Twenty feet!"

"Each. Forty feet in all."

"That's horrible. I can't touch that. I'd rather have the frog spawn," I say, reaching into my back pocket and pulling out a twenty pound note. "Here's two months in advance."

"That'll do nicely," she says, shoving the note down her blouse. "Do you want extras?"

"Now you're talking," I say. "What are your rates?"

"For another fiver," she says, "I'll warm my hands first."