A Headache (With A Vengeance)

Have you ever had a really bad headache? You know the sort, one that hits you behind the eyes, tries to blind you while tearing mercilessly at your brain, and won’t go away no matter what you do? Painful, right? If you’ve ever had a headache like that, take it, multiply it by a thousand and then you’ll probably be halfway towards the sort of thing I feel when I get a headache.

 You see, I suffer from cluster headaches, something which has plagued me since I left College and started work (I often wonder if there’s some correlation between the two). Every couple of months there will be days when I wake up, unable to even open my eyes without feeling as if the light is blinding me.  On days like these, I usually don’t even get out of bed because I know I won’t be able to function properly.

Sometimes, I can tell that a headache is coming. There are occasional warning signs. My eyelid droops, I yawn a lot more than usual – without feeling unduly tired – and sometimes I feel a dull ache at the very top of my spine. When I notice these symptoms, I would normally dose myself up on Paracodal tablets and take to my bed, hoping that I’ll be able to sleep through the worst of it. Sometimes, I can get through the whole event without too much fuss.

But, more often than not, it will take hold and the headache is totally debilitating. The initial blinding pain usually centres on a spot behind my right eye, but then spreads, its clawing fingers reaching across the bridge of my nose and out towards my left eye. It tightens its hold there, straddling my whole forehead, grasping for my brain, an angry red pain screaming loudly throughout my mind. At that point, I can’t hold my head up straight without the pain reaching an unbearable crescendo and I’m unable to open my eyes in even the dullest light.

What’s particularly bad about these headaches is that once they take hold, there’s very little I can do to shift them. Over the counter medications have no effect at all. The Paracodal I take can hold one off for a while, but once it sets in, they have no effect. Sleeping also works as a preventative, but eventually I have to wake up and then the headache will creep back in. My Doctor did recommend a course of anti-depressants (he suggested the pain was stress related), but I’ve seen too many colleagues, with stress, who have gone down that route and ended up with much worse problems that I’d rather not follow them. He also suggested that an imbalance in my oxygen levels might be a route cause of the headaches, but, to be honest, I don’t see myself carrying an oxygen cylinder round with me for the rest of my life.

So I put up with the pain. I take the occasional day off – Alan’s very sympathetic to the problem and always makes sure that there’s cover if I am off – but mostly, especially this year (since I started teaching 9F), I work through as much of the pain as I can, then find a quiet, darkened corner of the school and have a sneaky half an hour away from it all. There’s actually a very handy Dark Room connected to the Physics lab that I commandeer from time to time (we must be one of the only schools left in the country still using film in their photography courses). Mr Gardener, one of the science teachers who’s also in charge of the photography course, even recently installed a very old, but comfy leather sofa, which he claims was for the comfort of the students while they were waiting for their photos to develop.

Everyone, including the students, knows better though. That’s why there’s now a piece of paper pinned to the door, in the centre of which is an unflattering photo of my pained face. Below it reads the legend ‘Fox’s Den’.

Larson Loves Pizza

Pizza. Food of the Gods. A balanced meal all by itself. The provider of all your basic food needs – starch, fat, vegetables and protein, all delivered in one deliciously baked treat.

Not only good to eat, but also good – nay designed – to share. And, as its one of Larry’s favourite foods, it’s a meal we often eat together. A Meat feast or Double Pepperoni, with garlic bread, a bit of salad and a trip to the ice-cream machine or profiteroles to follow and all is good in the world for the Fox brothers. We gossip about people at work, I listen to all of Larry’s latest conspiracy theories and we generally put the world to rights. He has a good time, it gets him out of the house and we get to spend some quality time together, away from all the fuss of everyday life.

We try to have a meal out together twice a month, sometimes more often if there’s a special occasion, but never less. We don’t always go for pizza. Sometimes we’ll have a tasty, almost raw steak, on occasion a burger, and once or twice we’ve risked a leg or two of Texas fried Chicken in the shop beneath Larry’s flat. We rarely, however, have Chinese or Indian because Larry can’t cope with the wide range of different flavours, finding the whole experience to be rather distressing.

We also, as I mentioned, tend to eat out on special occasions, more so now that neither of our parents are with us. We celebrate our birthdays, our parents’ birthdays and, last year anyway, Violet’s birthday by patronising a local restaurant, getting very drunk and, more often than not, being asked to leave. We commemorate the passing of both parents with lemon chicken or surf and turf– the favourites of our Mum and Dad respectively – and I always treat Larry to a meal of his choice when I break up for the school holidays. We now also have our Christmas meal at the local carvery, due to the fact that I cremated three turkeys whilst trying to prepare the dinner for Larry and my Mum, that first Christmas after our Dad passed away. Larry wasn’t keen at first, it wasn’t what he was used to, but he soon got used to it. He even said that the sausages wrapped in bacon were better than our Mum’s.

Its funny. Eating out was always a treat when we were growing up, a time for the family to get together and actually spend time together, rather than just grabbing fleeting moments. Now, eating out has become rather routine, part of the norm, for exactly the same reason.

Larry doesn’t mind, though. He loves the routine.

He Ain't Heavy (He's My Autistic Brother)

“If you were a Stormtrooper, and had heard a report of a Jedi sighting – you know, Jedi, supposedly extinct in the Galaxy since your boss went on a rampage – in a cantina in Mos Eisley, wouldn’t you get straight on the blower to Darth Vader and tell him? Why doesn’t Darth turn up on Tatooine? Bloody lazy, isn’t he? Relying on others to get the job done. That’s why he never became the most powerful being in the Universe, and remained the Emperor’s bitch.”

This is a typical text from my brother Larson (yes, I know, our parents were quite cruel). It was the very text, in fact, I received on the night of our last casino visit. I often receive this kind of random thing from him. That or texts telling me how he’s seen Hitler on the train into town, stalked a celebrity or, once, a message telling me that he was going to start his own cult. It is a rare thing to receive a text asking how I am, or what I’m up to, but since our Mum passed away and its just the two of us, they are more frequent.

 I guess I ought to explain about Larry (we find ways round the stupid names our parents lumbered us with), as he is quite a large part of my life. He’s autistic. I’m not talking Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man autism, but he definitely registers on the spectrum. To quote the psychologist who eventually diagnosed him, he’s obsessive compulsive, socially underdeveloped and has very restricted interests. Actually, his interests are pretty much limited to George Lucas’ space opera, but that’s a conversation for a different time.

When he was finally diagnosed, after years of being overlooked as being just a little odd, our parents were told that, while he would never grow out of the condition, it would present itself as less severe the older he got. To be fair to him, he has learned to cope admirably with it most of the time. A few years ago he was almost entirely unable to communicate with anyone outside the immediate family, which led to many occasions when he would literally barricade himself in his bedroom to avoid having to meet visitors. Now he can go out with the people I work with (he doesn’t have many friends of his own) and, whilst he won’t make eye contact with them and can’t engage in simple chit-chat, he will answer direct questions about himself without having to rush off to the nearest toilet. Occasionally, he’ll even join Violet in a joke at my expense. He’s still terribly insecure, though, constantly seeking reassurance that I’m not going to abandon him, which I guess is why I get so many random texts. He’s also still prone to the occasional outburst of frustrated anger, the most notable of which almost caused a fight at our Mum’s funeral. Luckily, Violet was able to calm him down while I persuaded the distant cousin who had looked at him in the wrong way not to make the day any worse than it already was.

But mostly, he gets along day to day. I make sure that I’m never further away than the end of the telephone, should he need anything and, for his part, he makes sure that there’s always something he needs. It’s a very well defined relationship with very clear boundaries, which, given his situation, is exactly what he need.

Its difficult sometimes, but he is my brother, after all.

In A Class Of Their Own (I Wish!!)

As much as I enjoy them, 9F aren’t my favourite class in the school.

I know you’re not supposed to have favourites, but I’ll be honest and confess right here that I do. My current A-Level class, made up of 5 boys and 4 girls, is the best group of children that I’ve taught in the whole of my eighteen year career. They are perfect students, a mixture of curiosity, ambition, perseverance and natural brilliance. They work hard and achieve consistently outstanding results, as well as being polite and well meaning. They are sportsmen of high standing – the captains of both the boy’s football and girl’s hockey teams are both in the class -, as well as scientists, mathematicians and historians. They are the cream of the school, to say the least.

And they know how to talk. Not always all of them, sometimes only two or three, but at the end of every lesson they will stay behind to chat. About the coursework, about the theatre, about the historical accuracy of Downton Abbey, about anything and everything. They share their thoughts and listen to mine. They have grown to trust my opinions and I value theirs.

Its two of this group who nagged me into blogging. I may have mentioned them here before. Stuey and Louise. They claim they’re not a couple, but their friends treat them as if they are, and they’d make a lovely pair if they were. They have, recently, taken an interest in my personal life, trying to find out more information than I’m professionally inclined to give them. They tease me mercilessly about Miss Price, and about my suddenly not so secret life as a semi-professional poker player, and I return the compliment by enquiring when they are going to admit they’re in love, and by not giving them detentions for their cheek.

They’re good kids, though. Stuey’s an IT geek. Very into his computers, he wants to design software when he leaves University, planning to head off to the States to work for Apple. I’ve already written him a number of references for a variety of work placements with IT companies in the City, and he’s had favourable responses from most of them. I understand that he’s also proven to be a bit of an expert hacker, although Mrs Broderick, the Head’s Personal Assistant, will neither confirm nor deny that he bypassed security protocols when she needed access to the Head’s computer.

As for Louise, she’s more of a science girl. Keen to know everything there is to know about Physics and already an equal to the Chemistry teachers at Stoke Park, she’s often asked to assist as a lab technician during her free – sorry, study – periods, when one of the science teachers needs help a practical lesson with the Year 7 or 8’s. I’m pretty sure if you asked her, she could recite the entire periodic table, tell you the properties of the elements and provide the atomic number of each one. Which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for myself.

So you see, my job’s not all bad. Not even half bad.

Not bad at all.

My House (Is A Very Very Fine House, With Two Cats In The Yard - Well, One Actually, A Fat, Grey One)

You'll find my little house, a small, mid-terrace two bedroom place, about ten minutes walk away from Stoke Park Underground Station. You know, Stoke Park Station. Its that quaint little Victorian station, up there at the top of the tube map, somewhere between Harrow and Wealdstone, and the end of the Bakerloo Line. I've lived here for nearly eight years, since my divorce from She Who Must Not Be Named, and I've pretty much managed to get it exactly how I want it.

How about a tour, do I hear you cry? No? Well, I'm going to give you a quick one anyway, so don't be rude.

The front door leads into a hall, where my phone sits on a small table next to a hat stand, on which I hang my coats, jackets and surprisingly varied collection of hats and which opens into my lounge, which is obviously where I spend most of my time. I have a lovely 40 inch Sony TV, and a Blu-Ray player, connected to a Bose surround sound system, through which I can also play my iPod. My battered brown leather sofa, that I've had for so long it's moulded to my body shape, sits against a wall, and above it hang the many, many shelves that contain my large collection of DVDs and Blu-Rays. An armchair sits in the bay window and a second, smaller leather chair, usually covered in a white knitted throw, sits in the corner of the room, next to a tall, stained glass standard lamp. An archway leads through to the kitchen-diner, from where French windows open onto a small, decked garden.

My bedroom is a simple affair, with a King size bed, a small wardrobe and a chest of drawers, the only decoration being the poster of Breakfast At Tiffany's that hangs over my bed. I've made my second bedroom into a study, with my collection of hardback books lining the walls, and furnished with a desk and a small sofa bed that, apart from when Violet stays, is rarely used. And apart from the bathrrom, which is a regular bath, sink, toilet affair, that's about the size of it. The place is small, but its big enough for the two of us.

Yes, the two of us. When I separated from my ex-wife, I gained custody of Alfie. He was already five when She Who Must Not Be Named decided we should call it quits, and it would have been a terrible wrench for him to have moved with her, so I took him with me. He's nearly fourteen now, and spends the vast majority of his time asleep or eating, although I'm sure I've heard him on more than one occasion fighting with the neighbours. He's a typical teenager, really.

Except that he's a very large, grey, tabby cat.

A Fun Night Out

We always have fun at the casino. Violet and I try to go at least once a month, sometimes on our own, occasionally with people from work or, more usually of late, with Simon. We'll grab a bite to eat first, either at the little steakhouse that's next to the casino - they do a splendid mixed grill, as long as you remember to avoid the liver, and they cook the steak to perfection - or at Mr Kong's, a fab little Chinese restaurant in Soho where the Fried Chicken in Chilli Bean Sauce is to die for and Violet swears by the salt and chilli tofu, with aubergine. And then, its time to gamble.

Although she doesn't stay there all night, Violet's favourite is the roulette wheel and she won't place her money on any other table. She loves to watch the little white ball spinning over the reds and the blacks and often, after a few vodka and oranges, she explains somewhat over-romantically, exactly how it makes her heart flutter and her stomach turn somersaults. Me, I prefer a simple game of five card draw. I like the challenge of reading the other players and trying to keep my own poker face. To be honest, working with 9F has really helped to hone my skills. If you can tell that a fourteen year old boy is telling the truth about whether he has replaced the staffroom's supply of sugar with salt, then spotting the tell of an overweight bank clerk is a doddle. And keeping a blank expression in the face of some of the more explicit things they say is an essential part of this teacher's armoury.

You may be asking exactly where, on a teacher's salary, I get the money to fund this gambling habit that I seem to have described. Well, I don't. As much as I enjoy the risk of gambling, I'm still very careful about how much cash I can actually afford to lose. Its not a lot, I can assure you, and when its gone, its gone. But most nights, I actually go home in profit - over the last year or so, I've won enough to buy myself a new forty inch television.

And then, when the gambling is done, we'll either head to a late night bar for a couple of swift drinks and some chat, or find a taxi and head back to my place for a nightcap and some relaxing music.

So yes, we always have fun when we go to the casino.