27 June 2013
Been doing a bit of globetrotting again, seems I’ve been doing rather a lot of that lately – got a serious case of the trots, but not (thank goodness) in that way! That may have been the case with the old HIV meds, but with this new regime I am trotter free. The only trotters I’m familiar with these days are Del Boy and Rodders from ‘Only fools and horses,’ on catch up TV. Talking of trotters and globes, have you seen all the dots on my stat globe? It’s amazing, there have been visits to hivine from all parts of the world, even tiny remote islands I’d never even heard of before.
When I started this blog, seven years ago, there weren’t many people blogging about living with HIV and I was a bit nervous about how it would go down with the nation, never mind the big wide world. I was feeling very alone at the time and my idea was to help people living with HIV (including myself) to feel less isolated and also try to reduce stigma albeit in my own daft way by using humour as a cunning ploy! Well, it seems to have worked judging by the amount of hits the website has received over the years and now, with my new stat globe, I can see where all the hits are coming from. It’s wonderful and makes me feel less lonely. I’m getting a bit obsessed with it to tell the truth. My sister says I’ll end up in a neck brace if I’m not careful from constantly watching the globe spin around. I love seeing all the little flags from the various countries; it’s a bit like watching the Eurovision song contest and very good for my geography. I even talk to it…. Hello America…. ….Oh hello Australia…. look there is someone online from Iceland. If I can’t sleep at night I’ll log on and have a sneaky look which towns and countries are on line. I’m like the fool on the hill (or the fool in Mill Hill, which is more or less where I live) from the Beatles song. Day after day…. alone in Mill Hill…. the girl with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still…. but nobody wants to know her. That’s not true actually at least judging from the stats.
But the fool in Mill Hill,
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in her head,
See the world spinning ’round.
Ooh, ooh, round and round and round and round and round……..Then of course there’s, “Because,” the beautiful, heart rending song by John Lennon. Apparently John said, “I was lying on the sofa in our house, listening to Yoko play Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ on the piano. Suddenly, I said ‘Can you play those chords backward?’ She did, and I wrote ‘Because’ around them.
Aaaaaaah-aaah
Because the world is round…..It turns me on
Because the world is round
Because the sky is blue it makes me cry
Because the sky is blue ooh oooh ooh ooh ooooh
Sorry John, not with you on that one – it’s not very often we get blue skies around these parts and when we do it’s a cause for celebration not crying.
Anyway, I won’t be doing anymore globetrotting for a while. It’s back to the daily grind and taking Lady Doodles for her numerous walks. Sometimes, it has to be said I would much rather stay in bed in the mornings and curse the fact that I have to get up. But then again, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have witnessed the flash of a kingfisher’s wing, or the glorious profusion of bluebells, or tramped through fields of golden buttercups. All in all, despite the obligatory dog walking and having to live with HIV my world really isn’t so bad and I consider myself lucky in the fact that, for one, thanks to medication I’m still alive, I have a sister and a Labradoodle even though she’s a bit of a donkey at times (Lady Doodle not my sister!) and has landed me in A&E. I have somewhere to live and enough (almost) money to survive. And then did you see the incredible news about the little girl with Leukaemia being cured by injecting her with HIV? Isn’t that amazing, for once HIV is actually doing something good. Ha, maybe there’ll come a time when people living with HIV become popular instead of socially ostracised, stigmatised and forced to live in isolation. Folk might actually want to associate with us and then it won’t be such a lonely old world after all. Then I’ll think to myself …….what a wonderful world.
