BUDDY BABY, YOU'RE A

CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

He’s only alive because of his mum’s intuition. Born 12 weeks early with no heartbeat, he weighs less than a kilo. Meet my new grandson 

I’M not exactly new to grandparenthood, if that’s the right word.

Up to last Wednesday my two daughters had their hands full with a handful of kids between them. Five, that is...or two and a half of each if the eldest got her way and was allowed to chop her despised cousin Charlie in two.

The two boys and three girls range in age from 20 down to five but all have one thing in common. They came into the world normally and were lucky enough to arrive healthy and complete.

So when my elder daughter Hayley found she was expecting, everyone assumed all would go well. I know she’s 41 and  it’s  12 years since her second daughter, Daisy, was born.

But all progressed normally right up to the 28th week – with Hayley and her partner Steve Holmes focused entirely on the scheduled arrival of a son in early March.

Then, 197 days into Hayley’s  third pregnancy, came a remarkable – and frightening – development triggered by the smallest hint that something was wrong.

Last Wednesday, the embryo child all but stopped booting hell out of Hayley’s body from the inside. She sensed that something was amiss, and although her midwife was not ­unduly concerned, the worried couple wanted to be sure.

A surreal scenario followed, with Hayley and Steve acting purely on intuition and forking out £100 for a  private consultation with a  paediatric specialist.

He sent them immediately to hospital, where  a scan revealed that the waters around the baby had all but dried up. Fearing the tot would not survive in this sea of nothingness, an urgent Caesarian section was ordered and the baby was plucked, lifeless, from Hayley’s body with the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around his neck.

The little one had no heartbeat and was not breathing.

For fully three minutes, doctors and nurses united in a battle to give life to the tiny foetus. For Hayley and Steve, those three minutes translated into a lifetime of lifelessness.

As the seconds ticked away, they named the baby Buddy, desperate that he should have a proper identity, even if he was never to draw breath.

Then, his tiny body invaded by a host of canulas, tubes and ventilators, a miracle occured. The mite’s heart began to beat.

Buddy was alive...if not kicking. All 992 grammes of him (or a tad under 2lb 2oz if you don’t do metric).

For 24 hours, his under-developed lungs were helped by a ventilator. Then another miracle; he started breathing by himself.

And another miracle, he scored 8 out of 10 in an official health check – a respectable score for a full-term baby, let alone a barely-formed Bud.

Amazingly, doctors told the relieved parents that had Hayley not gone to the paediatrician, the baby would have died inside her within two hours.

Over the next few days, Buddy went from strength to strength. He was two days old by the time I arrived in Manchester for my Christmas visit., exhausted after a five-hour delay in my flight from Murcia. Hayley was waiting for me in hospital reception...there were predictably lots of tears as we embraced.

With Hayley approaching her 42nd birthday, the chance of her conceiving again after a complicated Caesarean  is remote, to say the least.

And with Steve’s only previous marriage childless, this was  his probably his only  chance to fulfil his dream of fatherhood.

So they desperately needed  Buddy to be a survivor…and judging by his never-say-die attitude throughout his first week of life, he’s bionically indestructable.

After four days on the critical list in Intensive Care, he was reclassified at five days old as merely ‘vulnerable’. By the time you read this, he’ll probably be doing aerobics in his cosy incubator with its vivid blue light.

With his sensitive skin and distorted grimaces, there’s something unearthly about my sixth grandchild. He was not meant to leave the comfort of his human spaceship until early March and at less than one third of the weight of the typical new-born, I could easily confuse him with ET.

Particularly when my specs aren’t around.

It’s wonderful that, with his future now all but secured, I can joke about which planet the little fella came from. All of which leaves both Hayley and me in stitches.

Only mine don’t hurt.

Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) December 23, 2011

MY CLOSE SHAVE IN A

HOSPITAL TO DIE FOR!

I WAS asleep when a chink of light  in the doorway alerted me. A man had entered Room 114.
A 6am intruder! The last thing I wanted on top of the angina attack that had put me in Torrevieja Hospital for four days and counting. Particularly with only a flimsy regulation-blue hospital gown for protection.
As I lay on the bed, squinting blearily into the darkness, the glint of metal told me the shadowy silhouette was on a business call.
He sat down on the bed - and  I realised he was brandishing two razors in his right hand.
My worst fears were confirmed. I was about to be shaved of my last vestige of dignity…by, of all people, the camp male nurse I had silently dubbed Dapper Diego. 
I hadn’t the heart to protest as DD lifted my gown and, humming quietly, went to work. Donna’s pube train was at the sharp end of a potential disaster - and my only thought was that Diego might not mind the gap.
Five minutes later, the plucked chicken with the dicky ticker was ready for her heart-to-heart with the stentist later in the day. 
More than 12 hours later as it happens. But of course, Torrevieja Hospital, like just about everyone in Spain, does everything manana.
Anyway, I eventually ended up at the mercy of  the guy whose job is to ping balloons into clogged up coronary channels. It sounds like a children’s party – and it might as well have been from the way the medical team laughed and joked their way through the entire procedure.
There was I, lying there with a catheter invading half my body via a gaping hole in  my femoral artery, and they were all cackling away in Spanish like kids playing doctors with a doll. 
I certainly didn’t find it funny…though their trivialisation of it all did admittedly ease my own fears that my life was in danger. 
Stentist? It was more like a dentist working upside down after administering laughing gas to himself and his staff.
That all happened last Wednesday – nine days ago. And you’ve only heard a fraction of the story.
The previous Saturday, my house guest Mike had to perform the old 112 and call the emergency services when I suffered an angina attack. Minutes later, I was in the back of an ambulance roaring down the N332 at 140kph with Vettel Mickey screeching behind in his rented Ford Ka.
I was about to receive proof – if any was needed – that the Spanish health service leaves the NHS standing. Even if it does seem to work at half the speed.
Torrevieja Hospital is a magnificent building with magnificent facilities …a credit to Spanish medicine in the 21st century. 
That was evident from the moment I set foot – or rather wheels – on the premises.
I was whisked through the emergency admission process in a matter of minutes…with a slight hiccup when doctors discovered the handful of different medications Mike had grabbed from my bedroom drawer weren’t mine!
Assessed and then herded into a 32-bed observation ward, I shared the following eight hours with an array of characters of various nationalities in various states of discomfort. 
Only an obligatory bland, salt-free apology for lunch eased the boredom. Plus the hope that I would be discharged later that day.
I suspect that is what the doctors intended because I was the only patient in the ward not to receive an evening meal. 
Mind you, that changed big-time when the nurses got word of the poor starving waif in bed C-21.
They hunted around and unwittingly brought me a magnificent fully-flavoured meal that had clearly been intended for a non-coronary patient. Salt of the earth, those nurses!
For the next five days, home was a comfortable, modern en suite room of my own. And for me, Torrevieja is right up there with any British private hospital - with the exception, of course, that you don’t pay five-star hotel prices. 
You get a much better view, too. Tourists would pay good money for the glorious panorama from Room 114 across the salt lake. Picture postcard stuff, particularly at night when the glow of lights on the far shore flickered on the water.
And in Dr Piotr Chochowski, I had the most caring of cardiologists. I’ve lots more to say  - but the main thing this week is that I’m not yet ready for my *Golden Leaves funeral plan.
And since the whole episode did not cost me a cent, I still have considerably more money than stents.

Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) 18-11-2011

FINDERS KEEPERS: ARE

ANY OF US TRULY HONEST?

 I’ve always believed that honesty is the best policy.

Indeed, statistics suggest that for most of us, it’s the ONLY policy.

But just how honest are we really? If you found a purse containing £60 cash in the street, but with no way of identifying the owner, would you hand it in to the police?

I know I would… because I did. Find £60 and take it to the cop-shop, that is...

I remember reading somewhere that something like 85 per cent of people are honest, in that they would never dream of taking other people’s property. That’s an encouraging statistic amid all the horror tales involving burglars, thieves, handbag snatchers and pickpockets.

And I believe that figure is not far off the mark.

The vast majority of us have no truck with the scum who believe that taking other people’s property is a much better option than working.

And I like to think most people would do what I did when I found that purse near a cinema in the centre of Manchester late one Friday evening.

It was a pretty little purse, probably belonging to a teenager – and inside was a wad of notes amounting to around £60. It didn’t even cross my mind to pocket the money…my only concern was for that poor young girl whose week’s wages had been in that purse.

So I took it to Bootle Street police station, where I was told that if it wasn’t claimed within a certain number of weeks, the money would be mine.

‘’And I can tell you that 80 per cent of cash we get handed in is never claimed,’’ the desk officer told me.

Predictably, I got a phone call some weeks later telling me that, in keeping with the statistics, nobody had claimed the purse and its contents. So would I come and collect it..

But the money was demonstrably NOT mine - it belonged to the person who had dropped the purse. There was no way my  conscience would allow me to have it…so I told the police to give it to one of their charities.

To this day, I don’t know where the money ended up. I also continue to wonder how much pain the loss caused to the purse’s owner…and why she did not go to the police station to see if it had been handed in.

My friends have similar tales to tell. My neighbour June, for example, recalls picking up what seemed to be a five pound note outside her doctor’s surgery in South Wales as she got into her car one day.

When she got home, she discovered it was actually a wad of fivers. She took it back to the surgery, where she discovered that a young man had lost the money – which in fact belonged to his boss.

June’s reward was the knowledge that she reunited the fivers with their rightful owner – while I never did get closure on my .not-so-little find.

So much for our honesty when it comes to the property of other people….but how many of us have never tried to cheat the taxman?

Like giving a plumber the nod when he tells you his repair work will cost £70 plus VAT but he’ll do it for £60 cash?

Let’s be honest, virtually all of us have done it. Yes, all those scrupulously honest people like myself who would not dream of pocketing other people’s property.

In the eyes of the law, wheeler-dealing with the plumber to avoid VAT is far worse than pocketing that tenner you find in the street. Yet we do it despite the fact that deliberately avoiding the payment of tax is not only dishonest, but a serious criminal offence.

Double standards? I prefer to look at it as an honest way of getting my own back on the legalised extortionists who tax me on what I earn, then tax me again when I spend my taxed earnings, and do it a third time when I die.

In other words, they celebrate my demise by completing a hat-trick of robberies and fleecing my children and grandchildren in the process.

.So what would I do if I found a purse containing £60 with a note saying it belonged to a tax inspector?

Easy. I’d use it to pay the plumber

Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) 28/11/2011

.

FORGET IT FERGIE,
LIFE IS TOO SHORT

I’ve met Sir Alex Ferguson on a couple of occasions (well, been in his company) and I have to say it was a pleasant experience.
Even if the Manchester United boss’s red-nosed jollity had  been inspired at the time by a glass or six of vintage vino. So why did I find it so pleasant to see his charges on the receiving end at Wembley at the weekend?
It’s not that I’m a Barcelona fan – it’s just that I have no time for two-faced people. And I’m afraid Fergie is a classic example of a split personality.
You can’t argue with the Scottish superboss’s record as a football manager. He has no peers in terms of success over more than two decades.
What I find disgusting is that Mr McMighty has become bigger than Manchester United – and that those who employ him have allowed him to do as he likes.
Last week’s press conference in which he called for Associated Press reporter Rob Harris to be banned just for asking a question about Ryan Giggs received wide publicity. But it was nothing new.
Over the years, Fergie has banned dozens of journalists who dared to write or say something he didn’t like. Indeed, it makes me wonder if it is more than coincidence that the hack who churned out United copy for the Manchester Evening News for so many years was called David MEEK.
And Sir Alex is vindictive with it, too. Not for him the ‘let bygones be bygones’ approach.
His ludicrous vendetta against the BBC has gone on for seven years now – fuelled by a Panorama programme which investigated the business activities of his son Jason, who was then a football agent.
A more recent example of his petulance was the recall of two players on loan from United when Preston North End sacked another Fergie son, Darren (pictured) as manager during the season that has just finished.
The fact is that Sir Alex has become the victim of his own success. He seems to be convinced that he is even closer to God than Jose Morurinho and the late Brian Clough. And the United board are entirely to blame for the situation.
Quite simply, they lack the bottle to tell Ferguson ‘‘Either talk to the BBC along with the other broadcasting companies, or find yourself a new job.’’
OK, we all know what would happen. United would be looking for a new boss…and that is the problem.
Quite simply, the Old Trafford board are just as scared of him as the frightened media rabbits who bow and scrape to his every whim.
They humble themselves in the eyes of the Mighty Dictator, which makes me suspect that few of those who cover United matches on a regular basis write exactly what they think.
Which I find very discomforting.
 

MUGGING THE MUGS: CARELESS

BRITS ARE A CRIMINAL'S DREAM

The gullibility of Brits in the Spanish Costas, and not only tourists, never ceases to amaze me.

Virtually every day I hear that someone or other has been the victim of a pickpocket or handbag snatch.

The experience of being mugged in public is both traumatic and disruptive, particularly if your passport happens to be among the stolen items. Which is why I have always been ultra-careful when it comes to protecting my possessions.

I have never been robbed – unless you count the evening I found 45 euros in notes on the floor of the Irish bar in El Raso and gave it to a tipsy punter who claimed he had dropped it. I realised when I got home that the money had fallen out of my own purse!

OK, that was stupid – but nowhere near as daft as those male tourists who wander around Spanish markets with their wallets wedged in the back pocket of their shorts. And the women who leave their handbags on a table or chair while they chat to friends – only to discover when they come to pay the bill that they have no money…and no handbag.

It happened to a friend of mine a few weeks ago. She went for a coffee after a busy day at work, plonked her handbag down alongside her and when she next looked - whoosh, it had vanished.

The sting was that this particular lady invariably carried all her documents, including her passport, in that bag, not to mention a considerable amount of money. It was an experience that will live with her until her dying day – and the saddest thing of all is that it could have so easily been avoided.

My friend has been living in Spain for some time, but most of the victims of the petty thieves tend to be tourists. They are so hell-bent on enjoying themselves that being robbed is the last thing on their minds. What juicy pickings for the villains...

I follow a regular procedure with my handbag. When I am in a public place, I always wrap the strap around my wrist so it can’t be snatched. And when I sit down, the strap goes under a chair or table-leg so it can only ‘vanish’ accompanied by an entourage of furniture.

Oh, and I NEVER take a bag to market – I carry cash in notes and wedge them into my bra. It means that no-one can rob me without being arrested for indecent assault!

My advice to men is that if you go anywhere where there’s a large crowd, leave your wallet at home, in your hotel, or hidden under the carpet in your car boot. Put the cash you need in your trouser pocket (not the back one!) and to make the fortress impregnable, how about keeping your hand in your pocket as you walk around?

While Spain’s Moroccan and Romanian communities are thought to be behind the majority of bag-snatches, I suspect the perpetrators come from more diverse roots. What one does have to concede is that these ladrones, however much reviled, have a remarkable skill.

One person I know had her purse stolen from the handbag on her shoulder as she browsed her way around a crowded department store. The thief not only unzipped the bag and removed the purse without anyone noticing – but also zipped the bag up again!

It was the best part of half an hour before my friend realised she’d been robbed. And the way it was done suggests that the perpetrator could make a decent living as a stage magician or in a circus.

But then, theatre audiences are not quite so generous to the sleight-of-hand merchants as the mugs they feed off every day…

'DIRTY, APOLOGETIC, UNFIT, DRUNKEN
TATTOOED, DOG-MAD HOOLIGANS...'

Here’s the lowdown on how Spaniards see us – as interpreted by Perez (pictured right).

HOLIDAYMAKERS BEWARE!

NEW TRAVEL CHAOS LOOMS

UPDATE: THE PROPOSED STRIKE  WAS CALLED OFF ON MARCH 24 WHEN SPANISH AIRPORT WORKERS VOTED AGAINST THE 22 DAYS OF STRIKE ACTION, WITH 70% REPORTEDLY REJECTING THE PROPOSED STOPPAGES.

The Spanish airport strike that threatened to cause havoc over key holiday periods has officially been called off. Spanish airport workers voted against the 22 days of strike action, a spokesman for Spain’s largest union CCOO said. “A total of 70 percent of votes were in favour of calling off the strike, with 29.7 votes against and a couple of abstentions.”

Unions and AENA had previously reached a preliminary agreement last week to call off the action after considering workers’ fears over privatization of the airport operator.

If you’re planning to fly from Britain to the Spanish sun this summer, take care – your holiday could be ruined before you even get here.

Unless planned talks between union chiefs and Spain’s development minister Jose Blanco are successful, travel chaos is set to strike over Easter, when airport ground staff are planning two 48-hour walkouts.

The planned stoppages are apparently being held to protest against the government's plans to sell off parts of Aena, the state-owned firm that runs Spain's key airports. The issue is so sensitive that three trade unions have announced a total of 22 strike days between April 20 and August 31.

IS SIR A SPORT? THE TRUTH ABOUT
PAUL McCARTNEY AND TOM JONES

The only celebrity I actually KNEW before he was famous is another shining knight, Tom Jones (yes, I am that old!). I gave him his first-ever write-ups in the Pontypridd Observer a couple of years before he hit the big-time – in the days where he sang around the South Wales clubs under his stage name of  Tommy Scott.

 WHAT CARLOS TEVEZ AND FERNANDO

TORRES DO NOT HAVE IN COMMON . . .

But I do question why men blessed with masses of money but few natural attributes other than twinkling feet don’t invest a few thousand in improving their appearance.

Carlos Tevez (pictured) and Ronaldinho, for example - they took years to find a good dentist and I'm not sure whether  Ronaldinho has got it right even now. Perhaps he should ask Nottingham Forest striker Robert Earnshaw, who looked like a modern-day Bugs Bunny until he had his gnashers seen to a couple of seasons ago. Either that or the Wales hitman found a miracle cure for unattractiveness.

Poor Rio Ferdinand doesn’t so much need a tooth job - even a ton of collagen couldn’t help the lipless one. Not that the Manchester United captain is bothered, I’m sure. He could probably bed half the women in the city should he wish to - though I suspect the vast majority would have their eyes tightly shut throughout the ordeal.

HOW DID CARRIE KNOW THE ROUTE TO
A PLACE SHE'D ONLY SEEN FROM A CAR?

Isn't it bizarre that the Spanish don't normally say ''cats and dogs'' - the colloquial expression is ''perros y gatos'' (dogs and cats)? Just as they tend to say ''blanco y negro'' (white and black) rather than our standard ''black and white''.

Well I'm afraid that, much as I love my adopted Spain, it's always going to be ''cats and dogs'' with me because although I love both mutts and moggies, I have a marginal preference for the purry ones. And that's largely because they have cleaner habits than poo-ches, whose noses should be avoided at all costs we all know exactly where they have been.

Anything clean and healthy is not to be sniffed at as far as Fido and his pals are concerned. Far better to savour the pungent pong of canine excreta at any opportunity and then lick the residue lovingly into their owner's face.

Some dogs, however, are extra special. Like Carrie, who was my best friend for 15 years until I found her frozen body on the back doorstep of our home in Manchester one frosty winter morning. But more of that later.

Carrie was a small sandy mongrel with white markings – probably a whippet cross because she hared across the local park so rapidly that I swear she overtook herself half way across!

She was two years old when we inherited her from our younger daughter’s best friend, who was moving abroad with her family. We already had a couple of cats and whilst initially Carrie and the moggies treated each other with caution, they quickly became great mates and indeed would often snuggle together in a basket at bedtime.

A few years earlier we had invested a large sum in a pedigree Irish setter puppy and inherited nothing but trouble and stress. Our attempts to house train the beautiful but highly-strung creature were a disaster to the point that visitors had difficulty working out which room was the toilet.

With the the red setter in grave danger of becoming a dead setter at the hands of her furious owners, something clearly had to give. And Beauty of Belhaven duly bounded off with her new owners six weeks later as the entire neighbourhood breathed a huge sigh of relief.

With Carrie it was entirely different. Calm and good natured, she was nothing like as excitable as Beauty. And she never had to ask to go out to do her business – she would squeeze her body though the cat-flap, albeit with some difficulty, and then squeeze back in when she had finished.

When we went out, we’d take her with us virtually everywhere and she adored sitting on the back seat looking out of the rear window. What she saw and how it affected her we had no idea – until one night when she demonstrated a sixth sense that was truly uncanny.

Perhaps once a fortnight my other half and I would have a meal at a casino three or four miles from home – and we’d occasionally take Carrie for the ride. We’d leave her in the car under the supervision of the car-park attendant while we dined and had a quick spin on the roulette table.

Carrie had been to the casino no more than three or four times – and always in the car, her eyes focused on the road behind as we headed towards our destination, and then home a couple of hours later.

One night, we went as a family to a restaurant for a meal, leaving the dog at home with the cats. When we got back, Carrie had disappeared but we weren’t overly concerned. Presumably she’d just gone out for a wee and a wander.

Then the phone rang. ‘‘Hello, this is the Salford Albion Casino,’’ said the voice on the other end.

‘‘Do you have a dog called Carrie?’’ Cue panic – and the thought that something dreadful had happened to the dog. ‘‘Yes, we do,’’ I replied nervously. ‘‘Well, she’s here wandering around. The parking attendant recognised her. We got her name and your number off her name tag.’’

I was flabbergasted. She had obviously gone looking for us, but how on earth had she got there? I mean the casino was several miles away, across at least a couple of main roads including the busy A56. And she could not possibly have followed a scent because she had only been there in the back of a car.

As we drove to the casino to collect Carrie, the only explanation we could come up with was that she had somehow remembered the route, even though she had never been there on foot and therefore could not have picked up a trail. Or could she? Who knows what goes on inside a dog’s brain – and how many extra senses they possess?

It’s 15 years or so since Carrie died that fateful December day. Fifteen years old and suffering from a heart complaint, I guess she had squeezed out through the cat flap during the night to do a wee, and suffered a fatal coronary attack as she tried to get back in.

She went to meet St Bernard at the Furry Gates still carrying the secret of her mysterious trek to the casino that remarkable night. Indeed, to this day I have no explanation how she found her way there.

Carrie gambled with her life i n that bizarre trek to the casino on highly-dangerous roads that night. And with her courageous if unnecessary mission to find us, she won even more of our love. RIP, little one.