[this, too, was written a few days ago! Comments still much appreciated]

I love comments: thank you so so much to all the lovely ones people have left so far. I have been reading them regularly, and again wish I could reply to them individually. Rest assured I appreciate each and every one massively.

So keep posting comments! I’ve no idea how many people visit the blog, and am not so vain as to want to keep a tally, but it makes it all the more worthwhile to know I’m managing to communicate to people who care. Obviously I don’t mean whenever you check the blog everyone should post a comment to say ‘Hi George, I woz ere and have read this post’, but don’t hesitate if you want to reply.

What’’s more, don’t feel you need to comment directly to me! I’m quite keen that people use the comments system to add their own thoughts/ideas/news: perhaps if you’ve visited me and have strong views on the pattern of boxer shorts I was wearing (it’s too warm in here even for a sarong at the moment), the world ought to know. I’m keen partly because I worry about the aesthetics of my underwear, but also because that way the blog will be updated not just when I manage to foist my witterings on a kindly visitor with internet access, and the updates will not just be by me. Feel free to disagree with anything I write, too, or question my dodgy philosophical logic. Or add your own take. Or write nonsense (I’m often quite good at that, too). Or correct my Inglish, though I see that already needs no encouragement…

A blog is like a conversation: so much more interesting when it involves more than one person talking; and as I’ve stated many times, I’ve really realised how very important to me my friends and family are. Your support is vital to me, and I consequently value your opinions massively. So please do share them. Oh, and do post comments to each other, if you want. This blog is at least as much yours as mine, and I’d love my long-winded prose to be brightened up by your own additions.

<sits back and waits for the comments to flood in, while glancing nervously at the clock as they fail to do so, and simultaneously worrying that actually this whole idea of encouraging people to post more comments is terribly egotistical and demanding…*>

*It really does mean enough to me already that you’re here. Thank you.

8 thoughts on “It’s good to talk, as Bob Hoskins was telling me a few years back…

  1. Hi George this is a sweet thing Stephanie sent, thinking of you lots and praying lots, Philip

    Am so sorry to hear about George’s illness. There is a cancer specialist in the States, Dr Carl Simonton, who has had great results with cancer patients. He has made an audio tape for those diagnosed with cancer entitled Getting Well, which I took with me into hospital and listened to on a Walkman. He has a sensitive, calming, encouraging voice. He stresses that cancer cells are capable of reverting to normal cells and that our mind has the power to inhibit the course of cancer. He says you must think of your treatment as an ally, a friend, as helpful. He says it helps to imagine yourself as healthy. One needs to make the decision to get well, and then approach one’s treatment with positive expectancy. Be encouraged by knowing that the natural healing mechanisms within us are potent. He talks about the need for consciously reducing the sense of urgency around the situation after receiving a diagnosis.
    Also, the national cancer charity, Cancer Bacup, is excellent for information – it has a helpline (0808-800-1234), operating 9-7, M-F, where you can talk to a nurse and ask questions, eg are there any particular nutrients which are effective in counteracting the side-effects of chemotherapy, or in boosting the immune system? They also have a website at http://www.cancerbacup.org.uk
    Deep breathing is beneficial – imagine each inhalation filling you with health and strength, and each exhalation getting rid of all your worries. Cancer cells do not like oxygen.
    These are just a few thoughts for George.
    Yours,
    Stephanie

  2. Beh..stamattina come tutte le mattine-si far per dire mattina visto che qui è la mezza-ho controllato il blog con la speranza di trovare un altro tuo post..ed eccomi accontentata.Hai scritto tanto…e a parte la gioia di leggere, è inutile che ti dica che per me è sempre un pò difficile capire tutte le cose che scrivi (il mio fedele amico dizionario mi aiuta molto in questo!:-)Alla fine però riesco sempre piu’ o meno a capire…anche se a volte fraintendo molto:-)

    Sarebbero tante le cose da dire…Inizio dicendo che con il tuo incitamento a lasciare post,MI INVITI A NOZZE!Partendo dal presupposto che adoro scriverti e che questo è davvero l’unico mezzo che mi permette di essere in contatto con te,non può che farmi piacere questo tuo “invito”.
    Per il resto,devo dire che ieri avrei voluto rivolgermi direttamente a tuo cugino per dirgli che ero perfettamente d’accordo con lui sulla questione dei capelli corti,e dirgli:BEN DETTO!”, ma sono state fondamentalmente due le cose che mi hanno inibito:LA LINGUA e il fatto che non lo conosco e non so come la prenderebbe una persona che riceve un messaggio da un’altra che non conosce per niente!

  3. Hey George,
    This is long but I thought you’d like to read the Bad Sex passages this year. Giles Coren will be the winner (deservedly) and Grayson Perry the presenter.
    It’s great to read your wittering and know how you are – keep it up!
    Tom

    Tarun Tejpal – The Alchemy of Desire
    (Picador)

    Leaving everything else for later, I went looking for where her hair began and worked my way through its musky trails to where there was none. And having found her burning core, and having drunk of it, I left it, and wandered her body, only to keep circling back to it for sustenance.
    We began to climb peaks and fall off them. We did old things in new ways. And new things in old ways. At times like these we were the work of surrealist masters. Any body part could be joined to any body part. And it would result in a masterpiece. Toe and tongue. Nipple and penis. Finger and the bud. Armpit and mouth. Nose and clitoris. Clavicle and gluteus maximus. Mons veneris and phallus indica.
    The Last Tango of Labia Minora. Circa 1987. Vasant Kunj. By Salvador Dalí.

    Marlon Brando and Donald Cammell – Fan Tan
    (William Heinemann)

    In a moment Annie was on his side, Madame Lai was like a plant growing over him, and her little fist (holding the biggest black pearl) was up his asshole planting the pearl in the most appreciated place.
    ‘Oh, Lord,’ he cried out. ‘I’m a-comin’!’
    She could not answer. It is the one drawback of fellatio as conscientious as hers that it eliminates the chance for small talk and poetry alike. But nothing is exactly perfect in this life, and for Annie Doultry the delicate but firm pressure on his rear parts was in perfect harmony with the eruption of his cock. He came and he came – we are dealing with a hero here. At one point his lover backed away to inspect the unaltered gush of it, like a plumber saying to a customer, ‘Don’t blame me. This water supply will stop when the dam’s empty.’

    John Updike – Villages
    (Hamish Hamilton)

    A flock of crows, six or eight, raucously rasping at one another, thrashed into the top of an oak on the edge of the square of sky. The heavenly invasion made his heart race; he looked down at his prick, silently begging it not to be distracted; his mind fought skidding into crows and woods, babies and Phyllis, and his prick stared back at him with its one eye clouded by a single drop of pure seminal yearning. He felt suspended at the top of an arc. Faye leaned back on the blanket, arranging her legs in an M of receptivity, and he knelt between them like the most abject and craven supplicant who ever exposed his bare ass to the eagle eyes of a bunch of crows.

    Giles Coren – Winkler
    (Jonathan Cape)

    And he came hard in her mouth and his dick jumped around and rattled on her teeth and he blacked out and she took his dick out of her mouth and lifted herself from his face and whipped the pillow away and he gasped and glugged at the air, and he came again so hard that his dick wrenched out of her hand and a shot of it hit him straight in the eye and stung like nothing he’d ever had in there, and he yelled with the pain, but the yell could have been anything, and as she grabbed at his dick, which was leaping around like a shower dropped in an empty bath, she scratched his back deeply with the nails of both hands and he shot three more times, in thick stripes on her chest. Like Zorro.

    Salman Rushdie – Shalimar the Clown
    (Jonathan Cape)

    “ … Let’s, you know, caress each other in five places and kiss in seven ways and make out in nine positions, but let’s not get carried away.” In reply, Boonyi pulled her phiran and shirt off over her head and stood before him naked except for the little pot of fire hanging low, below her belly, heating further what was already hot. “Don’t you treat me like a child,” she said in a throaty voice that proved she had been unsparing in her drug abuse. “You think I went to all this trouble just for a kiddie-style session of lick and suck?”

    Guillaume Lecasble – Lobster
    (Dedalus Ltd)

    She reached the staircase and climbed the first step but the cold was numbing her mind. She fainted, upright and motionless with seawater up to her belly. Lobster swam to her purple feet. Cut off the bloodless hand with his pincers, and climbed up the inside of the leg as far as the clenched knees. He was amazed at the pleasure he felt from being held in this way. His pincers slipped between the thighs, prising them gently apart. His feelers were just able to reach the satin of the panties. They fluttered, made the labia quiver. Under the shimmering material a hint of life was returning. Angelina’s thighs relaxed. Lobster pulled back his feelers. Tensed and released his tail. His strokes were fast and powerful. He was making headway. He sank himself into her warming muscles; his tail did not falter.

    Paul Theroux – Blinding Light
    (Hamish Hamilton)

    She was racing ahead, reading with emphasis.

    Her touch was surer and so finely judged that she seemed to feel in the throb of his cock the spasm of his juice rising – knew even before he did that he was about to come. Then he knew, his body began to convulse, and as he cried ‘No’ – because she had let go – she pushed him backward onto the seat and pressed her face down, lapping his cock into her mouth, curling her tongue around it, and the suddenness of it, the snaking of her tongue, the pressure of her lips, the hot grip of her mouth, triggered his orgasm, which was not juice at all but a demon eel thrashing in his loins and swimming swiftly up his cock, one whole creature of live slime fighting the stiffness as it rose and bulged at the tip and darted into her mouth.

    Christine Aziz – The Olive Readers
    (Macmillan)

    We made our way to the summerhouse and hid in its shadows. We lay on the cool floor and I twined my legs around Homer’s body, gripping him like a hunter hanging on to its prey. He made love to me with his fingers and I came in the palm of his hand. He stroked my breasts and neck. ‘Don’t wash it away’ he said. ‘I want to be able to smell you tonight.’

    Ben Elton – The First Casualty
    (Bantam Press)

    Murray was a nurse and used to undressing men; it was not long before she had found what she was looking for and liberated his straining manhood, and then he gasped out loud.
    ‘Oh Jesus. Yes!’ he gasped as her lips and teeth closed savagely around him and he felt the tip of her tongue poking and probing. Then, just when he was beginning to think that he must explode, her mouth was gone and in its place he felt her hands once more and he smelt the unmistakable smell of oiled rubber.
    ‘Glad this wasn’t hanging on the line to dry when you saw my room,’ he heard her say. ‘I think even I would have been embarrassed.’
    She slipped the big thick rubber sheath over him and then pulled him down to her. Kingsley soon discovered that beneath her skirt she was wearing nothing. He felt the thick, luxuriant bush of soft wet hair between her legs and in a moment he was buried inside it.
    ‘Ooh-la-la!’ she breathed as he smelt the clean aroma of her short bobbed hair and the rain-sodden grass around it. ‘Oooh-la-jolly well-la!’
    And so they made love together in the pouring rain, with Nurse Murray emitting a stream of girlish exclamations which seemed to indicate that she was enjoying herself. ‘Gosh’, ‘Golly’ and, as things moved towards a conclusion, even ‘Tally ho!’

  4. Hey George

    How are you today? Thanks for the updates. Sorry for being crap this week, been a bit coldy.

    Fitty (my flatmate this week) has a stonking great crush on Giles Coren, I hear he’s all of 5ft 4, I worry about the aesthetics of couples who will never exist. The times yesterday announced that starting good sex awards. Honestly.

    Just got bullied at the make-up counter at Selfridges, ended up leaving with enough rubbish to paint me entirely, if i wanted to be pink and green and grey. Although better, I think, than the Liberty’s catastrophe.

    Oh some good news, work experience at Orion week after next. And best news of all, six months after having moved into my flat, I bought a mattress. Hurray!

    Dave and Fitty send their love.
    Speak soon,
    Sheila x

  5. Hello, This is Cat Vereker. I was finally able to run away from Uni life to come down to London to see George the other weekend. I have to admit, I was very nervous about going to see him, as I didn’t really know what to expect. I had done some research on the internet into his particular Leukemia, but I knew very well, that each person takes it differently. I am so glad I went to see George. He looks great, if a bit pale, but he was full of beans, and quite chatty. When I arrived, I thought I had walked into a students bedroom! His room looks fantastic, with cards everywhere, floating turtles etc. He also had lots of visitors there as well, so it made me feel less guilty from not being able to get away from uni, as I knew he obviously had lots of friends visiting him anyway, which is brilliant. And I really think we should all keep that up, because it was obvious he enjoys it, though of course, if he needs to rest then thats fine!
    I am really very glad that I went to see George, he put a lot of my fears to rest, he looks very attractive as always, in his hospital gown, he is full of life, laughter and jokes, he’s not afraid to talk about what’s going on with himself, and he is still, very much, himself – George Norton.
    If anyone is afraid of going to see him, like I was, don’t be, he’s not a porcelain doll, he’s George, strong and wont let anything get him down.
    Everyone who reads this must go and see him.
    love,
    Cat

    George, I am praying and thinking of you every day.
    xxxxxxx

  6. ….mmmmmm….George…ho letto molto molto molto attentamente i passi che il tuo amico Tom ha trascritto:questo si che è un bel modo per imparare l’inglese…!iuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
    è….come dire….STIMOLANTE….decisamente stimolante!!!!!:-):-):-)

    P.S. Ti penso sempre

    Mc

  7. Word up George,

    Just thought you might like to hear about the party – Giles Coren was a great sport, and Grayson Perry announced himself with the words ‘I’m a complete pervert.’ Nancy was wearing a stunning dress, and everyone had a jolly old time – though obviously not complete without you.

    Praying for you lots

    Philip

  8. Dear George,
    In our old rule book, which we had to read, learn & inwardly digest as novices, it said that if one was sick in & in the convent infirmary, & one’s sisters in Christ came a-visitin’, one was supposed to “season the conversation with pious reflections for the edification of the standers-by”. Looks as though you are doing your own version of this in hospital, though from the look of some of the blog comments listed here, a bit of pious reflection might not be a bad thing ;)))))
    The only thing that stops me from biting the other passengers in a foaming rage of frustration on my snail’s pace trips in & out of work by bus morning & evening is saying the rosary, & I say it for you each day, hoping that you receive every blessing of strength & courage that you need. I think you will remember Sr. Gillian, who had such a wonderful way of laughing at the awfulness & rejoicing her way through hard times. I have a lovely picture of her in my room, & every time I pass it, ask her to pray for you too. Go gently, blog happily & flourish variously,
    love & prayers,
    Gemma cj

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