Friday, a fucking terrible night, up every hour so I emerge into the morning as rough as a badgers arse. I lay in taking my vital, scribbling a poem, and looking at my blank phone. My partner brings me hot water and toast as I try to rouse myself. Eventually I cannot do this any more, I get up and shower, wash my hair and spruce myself up. Whilst in the grip of deodorant and clean flowing hair I decided to clean out the water terrace. I finally got the thing sorted, squirrelled away the spare rain pipes and then found I had run out of spoons. It is lunchtime so I sit down and eat a sandwich and recover while I start the blog. There is a Hippo bag needs filling with our accumulated crap but that will have to be a weekend job. The post arrives and the only letter is my hospital appointment confirmation. This time next week I will be being pre op assessed and then on Monday the 17th I have to rock up at some God forsaken hour in the morning and report to theatre waiting area 2. Its only a matter of time before they issue e tickets and get met by a robo nurse before being operated on by a AI facilitated surgeon. Any way I shall try to stress inoculate myself before I attend and organise my affairs just in case the general anaesthetic proves too much for me. My final words to the team as I go under will be “I’ll see you on the other side, don’ t fuck it up !”
I eat lunch with my partner and join in the phone call to my youngest daughter and her son. He is bouncing around on a new medication to prevent asthma and seems to be very happy with life apart from the odd cough. It makes a really pleasant break in the middle of the day.
The Americans are due to ring me today to get my next two poetry collections up on Amazon. I am hopeful that they will up and available before I go into hospital. I had the odd thought this morning about giving some copies of my collections to the village library. I thought I might give them a few copies to stick on the shelves, assuming they do poetry, and some to sell to raise money for the library. My thought was it might encourage others to do the same if they are not already doing it. While I wait for the call I spend time buying the tools I need to future proof my water terrace. It clearly needs bigger inlet holes so I’ve invested in a set of hole cutters, that’s me sorted tomorrow. The garden needs restoration but one thing that needs doing is deciding where to put the established large pots, so things like the small olive trees need new homes. For a while I ponder over where to put things and then start drawing up the maps, with that out of the way I draw up a Hippo Bag contents list in readiness for the garden clear up. What I need is a labourer. In the old days I would pop down the labour exchange and offer a hearty muscular type a days work with a lunch and beer thrown in, but alas that does not seem to be the way these days.
The Americans ring and check I am available to receive a verification code, I am, and five minutes later my code comes through, which I pass on. If all goes well my two new collections will appear on Amazon in a few days time. I’m once more excited by the prospect and also apprehensive that I have had the temerity to once again throw my offerings in the face of the world. I am leaking spoons and know that tonight I shall cling to the life boat of a football match, and the joy of an election Have I Got News for You, which is bound to be very sharp and funny. If all else fails there is S.W.A.T. I get a message from a friend who is being told she is moving teams at work, I reply. This is may or may not be good new ultimately like so many things in life it is sometimes difficult to tell until there has been time for reflect, discussion and trial. It is however an unwelcome interruption when trying to recover from long COVID, not the period of consistency one would have wished for.
