I have started relearning how to touch type. I could touch type before 2012, but not hugely fast as I hadn't been practising it properly for long. Then I had a stroke in December 2012, and that effed up a lot of things to do with movement and memory. Since then I've been using the 'whatever works while looking at the keyboard' method.

When it happened, I was paralysed down the right hand side of my body. Nothing worked at all. Gradually, I have regained most of the big stuff.

Unlike a lot of other skills which I had to teach my body to do from fresh to live relatively independently, touch typing never seemed to be one of those essential things that you have to be able to do. So, along with a lot of other things from that time that were erased from my muscle memory (my actual memory is another matter that I might tell you about another time) I never really bothered trying it seriously again until now.

Most of my movement on my right side is fully restored, but there are some oddities that I have never bothered trying that hard to mend as they don't really affect my quality of life in the same way. I still have a load of tiny muscle control issues and involuntary movement happening in my right hand's fingers, which affects my dexterity on that side. For example, I find doing up buttons on shirts has always been a slow, frustrating and fiddly thing, but this was easily sorted - I don't wear shirts much.

I also have less grip-strength settings available to me on the right hand. I put it like this - you probably don't think about how hard you are gripping things and just unconsciously adjust the grip strength to the job you're doing. Lets say you have anywhere between 0- 100% strength settings of grip, your body chooses whatever of those it needs without you thinking - if it needs 67.265%, that's what it does. I have 0, 25, 50 and 100%. That's it. Often I find I'm gripping something at 100% when it doesn't need to be. Chopping veg for example, my hand starts aching and I realise I'm gripping the knife like I'm trying to strangle it to death.

To relearn the touch-typing I have downloaded a Linux program called Klavaro which appears to be very simple, and in which I've just started the Basic level exercises. There is plenty of this sort of thing online, but the decision to keep it to an offline program was made to defend myself against me. Distraction would only be a new tab away in a browser, focus would be easily lost, and I do not need much to lose focus - ask any teacher who ever had me in a class, or any work manager who was holding a meeting with me in it.

When I am sat at the computer with my hands poised in the 'home' touch-typing position I have noticed odd stuff happening that is frustrating. The uncorrected stroke effects I haven't deliberately addressed soon became clear.

My left hand is fine, and I seem to be picking up that side and relearning easily enough. But the right hand is awkward. When I try to move any fingers independently of each other - particularly my middle and ring fingers - it's not always the finger that I thought I was moving that does move. Also, my thumb twitches and presses the space bar sometimes when I was attempting to move a finger.

The first exercises have all been learning the middle row of keyboard letters, and I have done something extremely unusual. I have not sped ahead and impatiently skipped to learning the next rows yet. Instead I  - by choice, and even if the program says I have got it accurately now and wants us to move on - have been choosing to repeat the first exercises, to try to get it not only sorted as far as the standard of knowing what keys to press reflexively, but also exercising my brain, nerves and muscles to actually press the right keys when I want.

It hasn't been straightforward, but I have stuck to it over the last three days so far. Also I have tried to keep practising when I'm writing other stuff, like blog posts for example.

After this morning's session I noticed that the frequency of involuntary thumb twitch space bar presses was well down. I foresee with the top and bottom rows, right hand movements also being very hard to start off with, but it appears I might have the determination to try to get it to work this time. And I have to remember that this is a form of therapy for me, as well as learning a skill.

Maybe, with some application and patience - these two simple things are not actually very simple for me - I'll be back to wearing shirts with buttons again.

I posted about my MS on my Mastodon recently, telling of how I described how I was that day when Mrs B messaged me from work in her lunch break.

"I have been for my longer walk, still suffering the weak and wobblies."

Generally, Mrs B and I communicate how I am that day with a shorter W word slang for my various MS symptoms, rather than the proper medical ones. Mainly because I can't say half of them. So, I can have the weak, wobblies, whoopsies, weary, wees, and weepies, in different combinations.

I go with these easier words to describe what sort of mix of MS symptoms I'm having that day, if they're worth mentioning. I have some symptoms every day, but they're sort of at 'normal' background level when, to borrow a Pratchett term, the embuggerance is being relatively quiet. It's kind of like your fridge humming away virtually unnoticed in the kitchen; always on and working, but you only know it's on if you concentrate on listening to it gently whirring.

I can live relatively normally at this base level, and in fact it may be hard to tell that there is anything not right at all, apart from my use of a walking stick all the time. To be honest, I sometimes feel like I don't need the stick at all. In fact some days I question whether the MS diagnosis was wrong I feel so strong and healthy.

Those days tend to only occur in ones and twos - I'm brought back to what is my normality quite quickly, and the walking stick is often a genuine requirement again, often halfway through a walk that started off with me feeling like I didn't need it.

On a day when any of the symptoms becomes more active and is amplified - on very rare occasions is it all of them at once - they get the honour of being mentioned specifically, but with the appropriate W word. Who has time to type out an explanation about my fine motor control, proprioceptive and vestibular systems being scrambled to describe the fact that walking is harder and I keep dropping things, when I can just use our shorthand?
"Yeah, I've got the wobblies and whoopsies today."

So it's weak for muscle strength issues, weary for the crushing fatigue episodes, wees for urinary stuff creating difficulties (you do not want details), and weepies for the out of nowhere depressive emotional reactions to things that would elicit nothing in particular from me at any other time.

I've been using them so long now that I had to go off to the MS Society website, to refresh my memory about how the issues were properly described again. I'm sure I should probably learn a few of them, just in case I have to explain, in proper language a doctor can understand, exactly what I mean by "Yes, I'm getting an increase in the weak and wobblies."

I do have two more symptoms to describe, but nothing W springs to mind to describe the speech slowing to a drawl, and the refusal of cognitive systems to work as normal. Witless? Seems a bit cruel to be honest. 

Generally a blank and confused look and uttering no words at all in response to the question "Would you like a cup of tea?" is all the signal Mrs B needs for that. 

I'd like to apologise for the complete dump of a post that I published here yesterday entitled 'photography and me'. It was too long. To make up for it, here is today's post being too sho

In reverting to using my original online identity of brumph on the fediverse, my home timeline contains a lot of photos again. This is to be expected because when I started the account, sharing my photography was primarily what I used it for. 

A lot of my follows were photographers who had liked and followed the account because they liked the photos I posted, and I followed a lot of them back. This morning there seemed to be a load of intentional camera movement (ICM) photographs being posted, which was an area of photography I used to favour because of how unexpected and surprising the results could be.

This all got me reflecting on my history with photography. I don't like being labelled as anything really - 'a photographer' or 'a cyclist' doesn't allow for all the nuances of how deeply or not you are these things as just a part of your whole - but for my entire working career (before I retired hurt) I was a part of the photographic industry.

Career
I started as an assistant at a specialist photographic retailer when I was just eighteen years old. At that age, and probably what got me the job, I was enthusiastic about photography, and I'd owned an SLR type camera since I was twelve. I had joined a local photo club, the youngest member among a collection of what I'd tell my parents were 'mostly old fogies', who were probably the age I am now. They discussed 'techniques', had tea and biscuits and held club competitions, which I never won because the club chairman and his wife seemed to be very lucky at winning these things. 

But I read all the magazines at the time. I amassed knowledge of all the cameras and lens brands, and the way my brain worked back then, I could recall the specs of pretty much all of it like some sort of human database, before computers and even electronic point of sale in shops was a thing.

My brain doesn't work like that any more. I can't remember what Mrs B said to me ten minutes ago now. Weirdly though, I can tell you the size of filter thread that a Sigma 75-300mm zoom was on the 1987 model (58mm... both the standard and APO versions of it) and which battery the Pentax ME Super needed to work (depending on manufacturer, 2 x SR76. Or they could be called 10L14's, or 375's, but most SLR cameras of the time took them, and we sold hundreds per week, so that's easy).

I talked about photography equipment all day and sometimes six days a week, to absolute novices throwing themselves upon my encyclopedic knowledge of cameras, lenses, accessories, anything photographic equipment wise you can think of. Also to professional studio, sports, news or social photographers, and to people who were specialists in a very narrow niche such as property, heritage restoration and archaeological or archival photography.

Then I left the shop after about 18 years there (manager responsible for all three branches by then) and went on to work for Minolta as a Sales Manager, at the time one of the worlds 'big five' camera brands. It was at the cusp of the digital photography revolution, and they were preparing to launch one of the most eagerly awaited camera model ranges, the DiMAGE range, the flagship 7 model coming with a huge 5 megapixel resolution.

Of course, that looks pretty funny now. But it was very cool to be in possession of, and using myself when not working, a sample of every new model that came out, sometimes a month before the stock started shipping to the shops I'd been around in my area to take orders from, and getting in the hands of the eager gear enthusiasts.

Of course, digital photography was a fast changing technology, and it took a type of database brain like mine to store all of the new equipment specifications and compatibilities we had to take in and learn. Now there was software too, and firmware updates. The Sales Managers were the point of reference for all the dealers who phoned with customer needs and questions, and we faced them ourselves at trade shows and exhibitions nationally.

I kept my job through the merger with Konica, but having been diagnosed with MS I was made redundant (definitely in an entirely unconnected and legal way, probably) about a year later. A year after that even Konica-Minolta was gone, with the enthusiast and professional camera division, product development engineers, research departments and manufacturing being sold in its entirety to Sony.

Photography
It was only when I had finished there, and with some other jobs I'd taken in the industry (including going back to manage the camera shop), and was in recuperation after my stroke, that I started to take any pictures myself seriously. Through all of that working in the industry, I'd never really been as much of a photographer as I had been in my early years. I'd just sold the boxes of gear and taken the money it generated. I'd always been a camera enthusiast and owned many different ones, due to the shop's generous used equipment discount scheme, but a weekend doing photography was still a rare thing compared to how much I talked about it.

When I started taking pictures again, it became clear that I gravitated to taking black and white landscape, and to experimenting with the aforementioned ICM. Playing with image files on a computer also had a diverting and absorbing appeal, a rough equivalent of the darkroom skills I never had personally - although I'd sold loads of gear for others doing it over the years. 

It also fitted well when I was less mobile with my MS. I could sit and play with some image variations on a PC screen when I couldn't walk and balance so well.

I started a website. I shared some pictures on my socials. I even sold some through a couple of the print-on-demand website shops. I got some incredible publicity once from having my website featured as one of the monthly highlighted sites on WordPress, which boosted my confidence by having a few thousand visits and likes coming in on an intense day or two.

Then something wondrous happened. A lady in her eighties I knew locally, and had gone out with to take some landscape photos with occasionally, was a fan of my website and photography. She contacted me and insisted I take her entire Sony DSLR outfit as a gift, simply because she was changing to Nikon. I said no, you sell it to help cover the cost of your new kit, I'll help you do the ads and stuff, but she sent me a message "Don't make me come to your house and make you have it. It's yours. Come and collect it." 

OK. There is a stage where you don't argue with strong eighty year old characters like her. It was mine.

I totted up the value of it all when I was cataloguing the whole kit, with about seven lenses, spare batteries, flash unit and various bits. I could have simply eBay'ed the lot for about £10,000. I'd never considered owning this sort of gear, and now I did. It was mind-blowing generosity. All she wanted in return was for me to 'make use of it like it deserves to be used'.

And I did, for about two years.

Dormant
But I've been photographically dormant again for well over a year now. Nearly two. I still posted the occasional image but they were years old stuff, not new. The enthusiasm had just upped and departed.

It has coincided with a period of bad health and enforced resting. To be fair, I was never the most committed of amateur photographers. Never the sort who get up at the crack of dawn, or travel around scouting locations to come back to in the golden hours. The making images bug had been tailing off again before the health things really hit. My freelance income suffered while I was ill, so burning fuel on possibly fruitless trips was off the menu, and I was often too weak and too tired to even consider going out on a photo mission. I closed my online shops down and shuttered the website because I could see I'd have nothing fresh to offer.

A lot of it is physical capability, I haven't been well, but because I have MS, I'm always not well. It's not always completely disabling, but balance and strength, and simply the amount of walking and mental processing I can do in a day, is always finite.

I look at the camera bag as I go out the door sometimes and think "Do I need to be carrying all those extra kilos today?" to which the answer is normally "Nah." It's just too heavy for me to take on the off chance I'll get inspired by something.

But I feel a bit guilty about it as the kit inside it is only there due to the old lady who just wanted it to be 'used like it deserves to be used'.

I'm seeing all those photos on my social feed today, and I'm thinking, you know, I miss doing that stuff. I have the odd idea. I know how to do it. Can I be arsed to go out and do it? Perhaps it's just another problem in my head to get over.

I don't want to post things I've already posted too much, so maybe I'll try to get past the mental and physical barriers again and try to get over my various blocks. Maybe.

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There are still a handful of images on a Pixels store if you're interested to see a few more. For anything else new happening, well, watch this space. Or if you're on the fediverse, maybe watch that one. Link below somewhere ↓.

This blog is a completely new thing to me, and if it is to you too, welcome and hello.

Possibly, some of you came from reading scribblanity, where I was trying to write both as or via a character I'd created to hide myself behind. However, a lot of what I ended up writing was a journal of what was happening to me personally over the last year.

I've explained on a last post on that blog the main reasons why I can't continue to blog as the character any more. I deleted a lot of the personal stuff on there too. I just didn't like it mixing in and maybe blurring the boundaries of what was, in my mind, meant to be a messing about and humour blog.

I accept that mine might have been the only mind this 'problem' was occurring in. A lot of problems only occur in my mind. Anyway, having set the blog up as being written by 'him', and the name of it, it didn't seem to be a fit to just switch to being a 'normal blog' blog.

Thinking about it, this seems a more suitable home for those health update posts now, and I may well liberate them from their chapel of rest (the drafts folder) on scribblanity and bring them over here.

You'll probably see a lot of this digression and thinking of new ideas as a post progresses here. It's an ADD thing. What you didn't see is the gap here where I did go off and make sure I had the drafts in that folder, then started to copy and paste them over before remembering that I was working on this post - after a quick visit to my socials, and a little check on what time Liverpool were kicking off today. Oh, and some transfer rumours for the day.

Anyway, back now.

I also have switched the fediverse account I post on. I used to use one on fedia social, mainly for my photography (which has fizzled out for the moment - it might fizzle back some time, I'm feeling a tingle), and a lot of people kindly followed from that when I created scribblans. I've now gone back to using the brumph account, but moved it to beige.party as my single account. Followers will probably have a trail of old and dormant versions of me on all sorts of servers and apps in the wider fediverse on their follow lists.

You should be prepared for this jumping about. It has happened all through my life, small but abrupt changes of mind and big life upheavals, many times regretfully, many times just what I needed. I have accepted my mind is what it is and gives me 100% certainty that whatever I'm doing now is the right thing, until tomorrow when it's 100% the same about the opposite. It's a feature, not a bug.

Right, back to the socials to post a link for this post. Via something else first I expect.

The accepted and normal place to start a story is at the beginning, gradually work my way through the middle, and then we all find ourselves at the end. But I'm not keen on reaching the end yet.

Truthfully, we are currently at the latter end of the middle. I'd love for it not to be, but there have been chapters where it was very much nearer the end than would be ideal already, so I'm actually quite pleased to find myself there. The beginning did have some bright spots, that might have even given you hope that the middle would develop into being a thrilling spectacular of some sort, but ultimately it never really got going.

I'm not at the having grandchildren stage yet - and I don't think I'm really looking forward to that yet either. With one young adult child on the way to university this coming September, and the other just starting her first house-share adventure with friends in a city far away from us, it's hopefully a few years away yet. Anyway, in my day grandparents were old, grey, and smelled a bit off, and I'm... ah.

Like it or not then, I'm at my latter part of the middle. Bits of me are gradually wearing out and failing, the world in general is in interesting times - it probably always has been, but now we're all 'connected' and know about it - so there's bound to be something happening that's worth a few words.

I'll probably just get on with writing something about anything when I feel like it, and people can either bother to read it or not, which I think is a fair deal.

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There's an RSS feed link if you like to read blogs that way - you don't even have to visit again.