Clap for Claudia - and Me

Once I was in London, I visited Claudia a number of times in short succession. It felt good to be closer and although I had not yet found promising work, I was sure I would. London exudes a glow of optimism and opportunity. Quite possibly this is because one encounters so much scum and so many useless bastards that one feels that if they can make it and find their way, SURELY a great chap like ones-self MUST be showered with offers as soon as the masses hear that one has arrived. Yeah, righto.........!

I was taking advantage of the cheap flights that meant if booked early enough, I could get a flight from nearby Luton to Dortmund, on Claudia's doorstep, for £4.00. Tax would add over £30 to the total and then the appalling rail service to Luton would be two single tickets (No such thing as an open return) of £12 each for standing room only. Never mind, I could go and see Claudia on a Friday evening and come straight in to work from the airport on a Monday. Progress - or so I thought......

Now I am going to relate something as evenly as I can. I would welcome an outsider's insight on this because contemplating it has caused me many hours of anguish and distress.

Claudia still had pussy issues and she still had painful breasts when it was her time of the month - see the early posts from when we first lived together (Here) . This had just been something that we had both coped with. She visited gynocologists and doctors, she changed her diet, her Pill, her exercise, her fluid intake, her skin products, her sanitary products - all to no avail. I visited her one weekend in August 2004 and I had the worst cold I had had in years. Despite my condition, we would have had sex on the Friday, Saturday and the Sunday. On the Sunday, I had an 'intimate' itch that I commented on. I thought that it was perhaps the soap that I had borrowed. On the Monday morning before I left it felt worse and again I commented on it. There was not really anything that I could expect Claudia to say, but it was useful to recall later that I had made mention of this to her. Back in London, I was looking up the addresses of Clap clinics by the Friday, such were my symptoms. On the Monday I was in at one. I gave fictitious details and found it hugely embarrassing. Oh - and painful.... the bit where they push a cell scraper down your urethra and pull it back out........twice!!!...... most uncool! Anyway, after a battery of tests and a short wait, I had the preliminary results which proved I had a Non-Specific Urinary-Tract Infection (they called a few days later and confirmed the specifics). I was in shock and denial - still thinking "it was the soap, it was the soap.." .Bollocks! It was a fucking Sexually Transmitted Disease and I had caught it off my girlfriend, the love of my life, the woman I was utterly devoted to. Jesus Christ! What the fuck..... Denial prevailed. I asked the doctor, a Nigerian chap, if it were possible that this could have been carried by Claudia for six years - ie. her last boyfriend - who was a DOCTOR, but who cheated on her - supposedly only with his ex. He gave me a look that I now define as patronising pity, but then I took it to be serious professional contemplation. His gaze held mine as he said " Um" and then "Well, I suppose...." and finally " In theory...." Well my theory held that, being a healthy and robust chap, I had never been particularly poorly in all the time that Claudia and I had been together (five and-a-half years), however, I had a bad cold when I last saw her and I had been working twelve and fourteen hour days of hard physical labour and not eating particularly well so my condition was poorer than it had ever been when I was with her. It made sense to me that I would have been susceptible to infection in a way that I had not been before. And what do doctors know anyway....

I called Claudia that evening and told her I had an infection and that she should see her gynocologist. I said nothing more specific and I certainly never made any accusations. I never did, even when other matters came to light.

Claudia went to the doctor's, did the tests, took the treatment and claimed that for the first time in ages she felt no pain. Me? I was pleased, genuinely pleased because I thought that after years of pain and misery, something had been cleared up and she felt better. I was very angry that so many doctors had not managed to resolve a perfectly common condition that should have been an ordinary avenue of investigation regardless of the apparent class/ socio-economic status of the patient. I argued that she should have complained, written to professional bodies ..... or at least been indignant. She was none of those things and I let the matter rest. The next time we met, it got only a brief mention and would probably have ended with me being nice and positive and saying "Ah well, the main thing is that it is all sorted and you are not hurting anymore. We won't talk about it again."

Reserve judgement for now and watch how things unfold and then, like me, revisit this episode and decide if I was a fool.

From Scotland to London

After just over a year in Scotland, I was getting browned off. I was not particularly happy, Claudia was not interested in coming over, work prospects were poor for me. It was time to pull the plug on the place. My next move was to London. I would be closer to Claudia, it would be cheaper for us to see each other, I would be able to get better work and there would be more opportunities for Claudia.

Starting to see a pattern here? Well I didn't.

It was tough to make a start in London. To begin with I worked on building sites as a general hand. It was minimum wage stuff and hard work again. Pay rates were kept low by the massive influx of former communists from Eastern Europe. The most skilled tradesmen lived on top of each other in the same way backpackers did and populated all the construction jobs in central London. It was not unusual to be on a site with twenty or thirty tradesmen, none of whom spoke a word of English. I did often wonder how well controlled the tax/National Insurance/ Health and Safety/Trade Guild side of things was, but then we all trust our civil servants to do a great job and I am sure they are doing just that. The site foreman would have a bossboy who spoke enough English to translate what needed to be translated. This leading hand would generally be Russian posing as a Lithuanian/Estonian/Latvian - actually they were very often Georgian or Ukranian - I say Russian loosely. They would have tattoos with orthodox Christian themes, but done in indian ink that had gone a shitty green against fish-belly white skin. They wore gold and often had frontal gold fillings. They worked every hour that God gave and their womenfolk made their lunch sandwiches and coffees in affordable chains like Benjy's or else cleaned hotels and office blocks. Funny lot - those reformed commies. We love them all now, of course; an influx of hard-working foreign tradesmen is just the kick-in-the-arse that the local tradesmen needed to improve their own service ethos - or lack thereof. Places like France have had the local tradesmen pressure the government to keep the foreigners out (isn't that such a typically French thing to do? ) and the Poles have countered with advertising campaigns to smooth the waters.

Enough of all that. I was on these sites labouring for less than twice my weekly rent - see my second-ever post. For me the main thing was that I was out of Scotland and closer to Claudia and I was somewhere where I could smell opportunity and not stale fish suppers, stagnant hope and decaying dreams.