...aka Ageing, part 5 (at least - even my 'ageing' blogs are getting old - blimey). The radio silence in blogland is cos I proposed on the weekend, and she said yes, so I am now an engaged man...

So, the inevitable questions of how, where, why, etc. Well the short answer is Dartmoor, on top of a waterfall. The only slightly less short answer is that Zoe took me away for a mystery surprise weekend (only slightly given away when she said two days before we went, "Don't worry if you don't get time to buy wellies before we go - you can get some in Devon." Ah. But still, the rest was a surprise, and indeed it's Britain's best kept secret. The little farmland area between Dartmouth and Salcome - I recommend it to everyone. We stayed in one of a lovely row of cottages on a converted farm, which now houses a swimming-pool, sauna, jacuzzi, tennis court, full-size snooker table, games room with x-box, table-tennis, table-football, 200 DVDs, and each cottage with a full kitchen, log-fire, TV, Sky, DVD player, free wifi, yet all also beamed and old-fashioned and homely and beautiful. Plus it's wonderful scenery, the beach is 10min walk away, you can cycle a-plenty (and we did), and there are really really excellent restaurants and pubs in neighbouring villages. What more could you ask for from a holiday destination?

Oh yes, nice weather. Well we had that too, so ha. On Saturday we decided to make the most of the nice weather and visit Castle Drogo on Dartmoor, just cos it sounds so sinister and we wanted to see if there be dragons. We also thought we'd take in Canonteign Falls - England's tallest waterfall, so we reached there, paid our £5.80 each to climb the falls, and atop it, I proposed. For me of course though, I can't resist doing something a little different, so I did it via a magic trick. I forced two cards on her (that's magician talk - there was no physical forcing of anything, I'm delighted to say, as that is less than romantic), so she thought she'd picked two random cards: the 2 of Hearts and the Ace of Diamonds. I got her to shut her eyes and convert those cards into a number and a suit, ie. 2 hearts and 1 diamond. She opened her eyes, and there was the diamond, there were 2 hearts (living in just one mind), me on one knee and all around were tourists chucking up at what they'd just seen. Well tough, it's our moment.

Anyway, she said yes, so woohoo. We clambered down the waterfall (I'll put some piccies up on facebook of the view from there), and sadly forewent Castle Drogo, in favour of finding a pub for a stiff drink. We found this pub in the middle of Dartmoor, in Widecombe-on-the-Moor. Middle of nowhere, and in that pub, who should we see, but comedian Gareth Richards. "On my way to a gig in Plymouth", he said. I think he's stalking me. Last time I saw him he was sat behind me in Odeon Guildford, and he doesn't even live in Guildford. I'm getting suspicious. If he turns up at the wedding and yells out that he loves me when the vicar asks if anyone knows any reason, etc etc, then I won't be surprised.

Oh yeah. The wedding. I'd fotgotten that's what happens after proposals. Well by dinner on Saturday evening, at a lovely Thai restaurant in Dartmouth, we'd decided on everything from who's doing the readings to what sort of car takes her to church. But that's all to be rethought, altered and debated further over the next year (for twill be about a year till any knot-tying), cos otherwise what else are we going to talk about?

Facebook have already started their 'targetted advertising' (that's why you've been getting adverts about bands you like recently), and as soon as I changed from 'In A Relationship' to 'Engaged', I'm being bombarded with ads for wedding photographers or strippers for stag dos (alright, just the former). And speaking of Facebook, did anyone notice that my status all last week was 'Paul is vacant'. Twas meant to be clever, ie. that I could change it to 'Paul is engaged'. Vacant? Engaged? Geddit? Yeah, no one else did - it turns out no one checks my status. Pah. I feel unloved. Except the opposite.

I'm going away for 5 days, so (a) no blogging, and (b) I was looking at setting up one of those AutoReply OufOfOffice things that posh people with real jobs have every time they go for an extra-long poo or something. You know:

"I'm not at my desk from 12:35pm today. If you need anyone in the mean time, contact Janice my very Personal Assistant, yeah, that's right, I have a Personal Assistant, and she does exactly what I tell her, cos Janice, you're all mine. Mine! Bwahahaha. I'll return at 12:37pm. Oh, and actually don't contact Janice, cos she's probably with me offering me toilet roll."

I've never enabled one of these before, but it's the weekend before the gig I run at The Stoke in Guildford, and normally that's when everyone emails saying they want to reserve tickets. And I don't want them thinking that because I haven't replied, that they'd better make other plans (particularly now that every pub in Guildford has a comedy night now - all vastly inferior of course). So, AutoReply it is.

But then I thought maybe I shouldn't. Whenever I email my mailing-list, I always get a few AutoReplies - some saying the email address has changed, some saying things like the above one (but about holidays, rather than no.2s). So what happens if I send out a reminder to the mailing-list about the comedy night next Wednesday, and then I go away on my long weekend away? My email will generate several AutoReplies from people not in, which will then be sent back to me, which will then fire out my own AutoReply email, which will then generate more AutoReplies from then, which will again generate more AutoReplies from me... This will continue until I have sent or generated several million emails between Thursday and Tuesday, thus breaking the internet. No wonder broadband's so slow.

So I shall not do that. I shall stick to ManualReply. I don't want to have the downfall of the online world on my conscience.

Oh, and...

Yesterday I bought a thing, and asked a man about something.

This week I watched the single worst adaptation of anything I have ever seen. Regular readers may know I'm a fan of film, and religion, which makes me particularly interested in those lavish American star-studded biblical biopics. Richard Harris as Abraham. Charlton Heston as Moses. Yul Brynner as Aaron. Grace from Will & Grace as Mary Magdalene. I like 'em as I like any historical biopic, no matter how conjectural: The Other Boleyn Girl, Shakespeare In Love, Spartacus...

But Jon Voight as Noah is something to behold. I don't mind the odd liberty being taking to dramatise it. And I'm sure not everyone reading this will be familiar with the finer points of the Noah's Ark story. But I'm sure all of you most know that nowhere in the original text does it even hint that there are pirates...

That's right - the NBC version of Noah includes pirates. God wiped out everyone on the planet, apart from Noah, his family, all the animals, and, oh, the odd ragtag bunch of angry villagers who cobbled together a few planks to make something that floats.

It doesn't stop there. The original version has Noah welcome his wife (here played by Mary Steenburgen), his sons and their wives onto the ark. Only in this version, Noah piles on his wife, his sons, and then three random women. It's only during the course of ark's journey that the three sons get a bit rapey, and Noah intervenes and says, "Hey! You've got to get married first!"

You'd have thought God would be angered by this rapiness, but he's too busy playing with Noah's head by offering him mirages of dry land, then laughing when Noah realises it's just an illusion. Ha! The prankster God, so seldom seen in the Bible. Yet here he's also the impulsive God: at the end of NBC's 'Noah's Ark: Beyond The Thunderdome' (it might as well be), God decides that actually he's going to kill Noah, his family and all the animals after all. Noah begs God, but to no avail. So Noah starts whistling. It is a funny whistle. He even does a little dance with it (in Jon Voight's most demeaning screen appearance since - no, including Anaconda). God likes the whistle/dance combo, laughs, and lets Noah off.

What?! If that's what changes his mind, why has no one else done this since? When Hitler pulled out his gun in his bunker, did he pucker up, do a few bars of Deutschland Deutschland Uber Alles, a little jig, and Bob's Your Uncle?

Oh, and Mrs Noah tries to kill all the animals she doesn't like. And they all go mad, like in Cast Away. They start chanting and wanting to sacrifice each other, and I wouldn't put it past them to have conversations with a football called Wilson. Then there's a peddler man, who like the pirates, somewhere survived the flood. He's played by James Coburn, and sells useful items, novelties, party tricks... Noah doesn't buy anything, which must nark the peddler a bit, because I can't imagine there are many boats around. Unless as well as Noah's Ark, there's also Jeff's Ark, Steve's Ark, etc, which I wouldn't put past 'em. That's NBC: Not Biblically Cohesive.

It's been quite a few days - beginning on Thursday morning with a trip to A&E. It was half a day of lying on a hospital trolley, two days of worry, four days of terrible pain, and a fair amount of chess. But generally the weekend played out like an episode of House. I had a medical conundrum that no one could work out. So my first question to you is this: are you a fan of TV show House? If so, and you don't get embarrassed or awkward about reading a stranger's (or friend's, depending if you know me) medical history, then read on, and see if you can work out what was wrong with me...

Thursday morning I awoke with agonising pain in my abdomen. I had got through a bottle of wine the night before, so wondered if it could be something hangoverish. But this was properly agonising, so pretty soon I thought it can't be that.

Six years ago I was rushed to hospital with peritonitis, which is a pretty bad condition, which in my case resulted from a rupture in my bladder. It was very dangerous, and only thanks to immediate surgery did I get through it. That too began with a sharp agonising pain in my abdomen, so when this new pain appeared last Thursday, I panicked a little. The main difference is that six years ago it was just on the right side, and Thursday's pain was all across from right to left, and a little higher. Could it be some internal rupture, just a bit higher up?

My other pondering was that it could be related to lower back pain I had two weeks ago: same region of the body, only the back pain was around the back and the front pain was, well, around the front, obviously. I went to the GP then and he diagnosed it as mechanical back pain (common for tall men) and gave me a course of Diclofenac - a hefty ibuprofen-based painkiller. So that seemed to sort the back pain from two weeks ago, but could he have misdiagnosed me? Could Thursday's new abdomenal pain be this same back pain, only... moved round the front?

A&E couldn't work out what it was. I had an X-ray, blood tests, wee tests, and my poor parents and girlfriend kindly wondered in to see me lying on a hospital bed in A&E wearing a hospital gown with a needle in my arm and an oxygen mask around my mouth (I was feeling a bit faint from the pain). Bless 'em. In the mean time, a surgeon visited me to see if I should have surgery, as I did with the peritonits 6 years ago. He decided not. He concluded a few things were behind it, including a wee infection among other things. So he gave me some antibiotics, some new painkillers, and sent me home with them.

So what was wrong with me? We think we know now (although it will take another few days to know for sure, till the correct drugs kick in), and it was solved by my GP, and my mum chatting with a roomful of nursing friends. But do you know? It can be solved from the above information, and you don't need to be overly medical to work it out. If you need some more thinking time, have a quick re-read. For the answer is in the next few paragraphs. In the mean time, here's our Graham with a quick reminder...

Would you have done surgery?
Would you diagnose a wee infection?
Would you suspect the evil peritonitis (internal rupture) from 6 years ago had come back?
Was it the back pain from 2 weeks ago, making its way to the front for some reason?
Or something else?

Right. Time's up. Let's see if you're more like Hugh Laurie as Dr House, or more like Hugh Laurie in Blackadder. If you've seen House then you'll know it follows a pretty familiar formula. Well the history of the bladder rupture - that's the early diagnosis, and the red herring that a House episode would feature about 15min in. That was enough to panic me, but the pain from last Thursday was higher and not just on one side, so nope - similar feeling but not the same. So if you opted to do surgery on me - you're wrong. Or you're sick and twisted. In which case you're still wrong, just in a different way.

The A&E doctor suggested a wee infection. Also wrong, because if so, I'd have had the pain lower, ie. where the wee is. And what about the back pain from 2 weeks ago? Related? No, that was just back pain from bending over in the wrong way. But me having the back pain is related to it...

The drugs the GP gave me two weeks were a course of Diclofenac - an ibuprofen-based painkiller. As you may know, ibuprofen is the one that you have to take with food, otherwise it enrages your stomach. Well, I had been, but it's still a pretty heavy-duty painkiller, and to have a course of it is a little bit excessive. But I obey the GP, so even though it had fixed my back, I was still finishing the course. Which didn't make my tummy very happy. It gets pretty acidic, and you can change the 'pretty' to 'really very very' if you add something else acidic and silly to the stomach like, say, a bottle of wine... which I did mention I had the night before the pain. So, bottle of wine, plus stomach of unneccessary ibuprofen, equals much abdomenal pain.

It's still there, but at least I know what caused it now. Oh, and if you guessed right, well done, you have now graduated medical school. And you're better than the doctor in A&E...

Had a hairchop today (prompting, as ever, cries of "Haircuhuhut" from my housemates), and I was very impressed. It was the first time ever ever in my 29 years of having my hair cut that the barber offered to trim my eyebrows. I thought wow, what a great barber. It has clearly slipped the mind of all previous barbers.

Only of course it's not necessarily that the others were lacking by not offering such a service. The other explanation is that I'm ageing, and thus hair is protruding from places it shouldn't. Indeed, this morning I bought my very first nose-hair trimmer. Too much information I know, but that's what blogs are for. It is a definite step towards the ageing direction. See my previous post for the more serious reasons that this week sees me feeling like I'm growing up finally. Well today is proof in a more trivial way that the ageing process even happens to us twentysomething (where 'something' = as high a number as possible).

So let's for the moment presume that it's not that I'm ageing that caused today's barber to offer an eyebrow trim. Let's presume instead that it's just that it has a highbrow (as well as eyebrow) salon in a chic part of town, where such a deluxe service is offered as standard. And where is this fine salon, you may ask? Mr Toppers, Goodge St, £6.