Tag: General

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The worst time of year to be a petrolhead.

The off-season for motorsports is always a barren time for petrolheads, the withdrawal symptoms driving many true fans to extraordinary lengths to simply get a second of the glorious engine note that can only come from a finely-tuned piece of engineering being thrashed to within a hairs-width of its tolerances. With the faffing around and shambolic handling of the WRC this year, there’s even been uncertainty over getting a fix of dirt and gravel action.

Football fans get their beloved sport pretty much all year round thanks to friendlies, tournaments, internationals etc so don’t truly appreciate how bad it is for us. There is no F1, no MotoGP, no Touring Cars and no WRC this year (well, there is but it’s pot luck on the coverage) – yeah there’s NASCAR but you have to pay for that, and even American friends we know admit that watching it on TV can cause a strong desire to watch some paint dry. It’s a different matter being there, and I’ve always said I’d like to experience a NASCAR event for real to get that sense of atmosphere, excitement and thrill that people enjoy.

What is it about the thought of motor vehicles being pushed to their limits? It’s the sound, that rasping sound of internal combustion and the vibrations you get in your chest as a car (or bike) shoots past. It’s the smells, being at a racetrack and getting that whiff of oil, carbon, petrol. It’s the thrill of seeing people pushing finely engineered machines to their limits. It’s the technology and the engineering itself, the genius of design and science with the best engineering solutions that exist. It’s the whole package.

The petrol withdrawal symptoms are so bad that F1 testing (yes, TESTING) is marked on calendars, counted down to, and then followed on Twitter, Autosport, blogs and more with a level of enthusiasm that is almost embarrassing in its anorak-yness (hey, a new word!)

What’s truly sad about testing is that it doesn’t tell you anything. The times are often irellevant as each team is doing different test programmes. The cars that have just been launched will bear little resemblance to the cars that will turn up for the first race (due to the endless push for performance, and the perpetual air of paranoia) so you can’t even get a full picture of what the cars are going to look like. Yes, you get a rough idea as a cars appearance will rarely change drastically but the front wing will change, the rear wing will likely change, elements on the bodywork will change, the diffuser may well change and so on.

The biggest sadness of this all, is that I am one of these people. I’m counting down to the first race in Australia. I’m looking forward to seeing what Sky are going to bring to F1 coverage. I’m following all the tests. I check Autosport more times a day than I check any other site (except twitter, but I use an app for that and that’s primarily to get the latest motorsports news the instant it’s out there!)

Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Mr Hartley and… I am a petrolhead.

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Glancing Back and Looking Ahead

Well, we’re now pretty much both feet into 2012 with me hardly ever getting the year wrong on forms etc. This means that it’s time to take a look back on 2011 and a look forward into what my hopes, dreams, thoughts and plans are at the beginning of this new year.

Before I do that though – allow me to wish all my readers a belated Happy New Year! I hope you all had a great time over Christmas and that this year will be a great time for you all.

I’m going to do things a bit different this time around as I’m not going to split the two years into individual posts – mainly because life is just so busy right now and I seem to have little time for breathing let alone anything else.

Regular readers will know that last year was quite the rollercoaster ride – with many highs (holiday, Big Church Day Out and more) and various lows (the biggest being the shock loss of a job) so summarising the year, and the lessons learnt, is a bit of fun.

Continue reading “Glancing Back and Looking Ahead”

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One year on…

November 15th 2010 is a date that is undoubtedly one of the key dates of my life so far, and yet one year on it’s almost also one of the most forgettable.

After fighting the NHS for far too many years, even waiting 6 years for an MRI that should have happened at least 4 years earlier if not sooner than that, I underwent a Cervical Discectomy.

It was the culmination of years of bureaucracy and hassles, pain management techniques and drug regimes, understanding and disillusionment (being called a liar and told it’s all in your head is rather deflating!) – but it wasn’t something that we had rushed into. The operation carried risks – let’s be clear about this, I was having surgery on my spine in the cervical region… if something went wrong or a slight slip happened then I faced life as a quadriplegic! As it turned out later, if I hadn’t have fought or if we hadn’t taken the option of surgery then that would have been the end-game anyway as my spinal cord was being compressed by over 50%.

A cervical discectomy, in my case, involved some bone shaving and removing some discs to be replaced by a cage filled with bone, polymer and titanium. So much so that my neck doesn’t hinge at the bottom like most peoples but rather 2-3 inches higher up at the top of my neck.It also makes me my own version of the Bionic Man Smile

It was easy to look around the ward that day and dismiss what I was going through as “minor” – there were people in for brain surgery after all. That notion was eradicated by the ward staff though as I was informed my surgery was amongst the trickiest on the schedules and that I had one of Addenbrookes top Neurosurgeons conducting my surgery! Yes, all of you who said I needed a brain surgeon – I got one!

Expectations for the surgery were mixed. Some said I should see reasonable improvement straight away, others said it would take time and others said it was a complete waste of time (the movable MRI study I took part in removed any of the validity of that idea though!)

I said after surgery I was going to allow myself 18 months to decide for myself if it had been a success, a prevention of worse to come or even a failure. After 12 months I think I’m in a pretty good position now to state how I feel it has worked out.

There were several key factors for me with regards to the surgery:

  • Easing of Pain in my neck, arms, back and hands especially
  • Removing the regular, and painful, pins and needles from my arms and hands
  • Regaining strength in my arms and hands
  • Reduction in required medication
  • Greater fine motor-functions with more stability in my hands and less difficulty in doing simple tasks like buttoning up a shirt.

The other area that came up once the experimental MRI results were seen (which wasn’t until after my surgery) was relieving the pressure on my spine so that I could face a future without fear of losing the use of my arms and legs.

In some ways I was naïve in believing that this was achievable (my heart leading there!), and yet I was also realistic in believing that the best I could hope for was improvement rather than outright cure (my head at work) – I never expected a full recovery, as that damage has been there far too long, but I was looking for an improvement… just a bit of relief.

Well (after a final MRI, a 2 hour delay, and a really good discussion with a great consultant) it turns out that, as has been my own experience the past year, the op hasn’t actually “fixed” anything. I’m still in pain, on the full dose of painkillers, with pins and needles, and with weak motor skills that rule me out from ever defusing a nuclear bomb in the heart of Peterborough! (It’s OK Bruce Willis, your job is safe!)

The op has managed to relieve most of the pressure on my spinal cord, although there is one area where it is still compressed on one side, but the delays in getting the surgery have meant that the damage is most likely permanent.

70% of people see an improvement. 2% see a deterioration due to complications. 28% see no change. Guess I’m just in that 28%.

I firmly believe that God heals through the work of the surgeons, and through medication. I believe that He has given us the knowledge that enables medicine to be understood and used. There are times though when we must rely on a divine touch from The Great Healer Himself, and that’s where I am at – I am fully reliant upon Gods healing touch to restore my spinal cord to it’s natural condition, to rebuild the damaged nerves, and to heal the overall long term muscular and skeletal consequences of my situation.

Disappointed? Yes, I am. As I say, I wasn’t expectant of a full cure – but I did honestly believe I would see some improvement. Disheartened? Sometimes if I’m honest, but most of the time I simply fall back on my belief that there *is* healing waiting for me… In HIS time.

Now, do you want to see something cool? Here’s a quick snapshot, rather shaky I’m afraid, of my dynamic MRI. with a piccy above it so you can understand what you are seeing… enjoy!

MyNeck
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhykIwAaUco[/youtube]

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Be careful – that fork in the road might give you a puncture!

*groan*

OK – I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist it and to be honest, as I try to be here, that is probably about as funny as this post is going to get. Yup, this is a serious post.

It’s been well documented here that there’s a lot going on, and that we feel God has called us to move on. I’ve only mentioned it once or twice… maybe thrice at a push 🙂 – The thing is, there is a lot more to obedience than simply saying (and believing) that we are ready.

I’ve now been in my new job for two whole weeks, and it’s definitely an interesting place to work. I think I’ve grown beyond the “honeymoon period” with jobs in some ways, so try to go in with my eyes open. Nowhere is perfect, but I can honestly say that I think I’m going to be happy here. There’s progression. There’s training. There’s resources. And it’s all for a good purpose. Yes, there are politics and there will be frictions but show me any job where that isn’t the case. Even a one-man operation will have frictions and politics.

As I previously blogged, we feel that the starters pistol has now been fired and that this is the moment that we’ve been waiting for for three years and more. Except we’ve kinda sat there almost ignoring the elephant in the room.

Until Friday the other week. The Mrs was on Taxi duties so I was home alone (well the boys were in the house but in bed) and looking forward to an evening of catching up on TV and relaxing after my first week in the office. All was going swimmingly and then something unexpected, but always welcome, happened.

God turned up.

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A New Dawn

A New Dawn

A New Dawn

October the Third Two Thousand and Eleven.

Even spelling it out it doesn’t look much on a page. It’s quite remarkable how the small things can be the biggest. Remarkable yet also logical, scientific and biblical. Scientific as know we’re all made of cells and more, and if you’ve not seen the Laminin clip then head over to my post here. Biblical – remember “faith as small as a mustard seed”?. Logical – well, we’ve all experience it haven’t we? That one moment that changes the course of our lives, or even those lots of moments that form the road map for our lives.

03/10/11 is one of those moments. A breaking dawn on a new day.

In some ways it’s the beginning of the culmination of a 3 year faith journey. Not over yet, and quite how long this new day will be is yet to be seen, but it’s certainly the beginning of what we’ve been praying about and looking for.

On the 3rd October I start my new job. It’s exciting and scary, nerve-wracking and at the same time peaceful, happy and sad. I guess that’s what a lot of new chapters are like, what new days are about really – the ending of one day, the start of another.

I’m genuinely excited about what I’m heading into – there’s potential in this job, and it has the appearance of being a career instead of merely another rung on the ladder. There’s challenges, progression, a chance to play a part in something bigger and a feeling that the only limitation to what lies ahead would be me.

The job isn’t the whole story though just as that first bit of light, following that dark of night, isn’t the full day but merely heralding the commencement. This new role is the first step along a new road for us.

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