Friday and I wake up with last nights visit to Warwick Arts Centre to see Motionhouse’s new production Hidden on my mind. I enthusiastically drove as I was relieved to be free of my plaster, but still bandaged. Arriving just in time having played the “where do I park ” game there was just time to say a quick hello to Louise Richards the co-founder and executive director of Motionhouse, who I knew from the early days of the company when they visited two of the prisons I worked in, in the late 80s and late 90s. I was briefly on their board until it was clear I was out of my depth but by then they had established themselves. This was a long time ago. Anyway the curtain went up and we were treated to a two act work of incredible artistry, accomplishment and ideas. The energy and skill of the dancers brilliant and the stage set really technically difficult to co-ordinate with movement and projecting. Complex in content and matched by the complexity of the technology required to create the environment. The most amazing bit was that the dancers had to move parts of the set at the right moment for the right projection to appear at the right time. Apparently the dancers have to count the entire time as they dance and move stuff on stage. Its an incredible feat of co-ordination. Underlying it was the message as Kevin Finnan, the artistic director, says in the programme “to bring a sense of hope and a belief in the future of humanity” in a world currently filed with conflicts of devastating consequences for individuals.

Having driven home I donned my newly made finger splint and went to bed full of ideas but very very tired.

So this is how I get to wake up with a head full of ideas however I needed pain killers in the night, probably not a good idea to drive but hey ho! I’ve no time to be shilly shallying about as I am off to the dentist for about ten o’clock. I arrive on time and we have a chat about how I am and what is going on for me to update my medical history. Then its time for the inspection and the prodding and poking accompanied by the dentist secret language to the assistant. I’ve never quite understood why they insist of sticking a needle into your gums and saying cheery things like “three lower left bleeding”. Just how impenetrable to steel are my gums meant to be? Inspection over we chat and I agree to a couple of up to date X rays which come up really quickly and we discus a way forward. In the end I agree to go back in three months and will consider some more work at that time and in the meantime visit the hygienist. I leave and go to the C0-Op to get a paper and return home.

There are cross words to do before chores and of course a bacon sandwich to be had curtesy of my partner. So, with a kitchen light bulb replaced, my washing in, the dishwasher filled and set on its way and the tumble dryer merrily tumbling a consignment of towels I sit and draft the blog. I watched yesterdays blog and I am appalled by my video, I am truly boring on it, very flat. Not the sort of thing to watch in the proximity of sharp objects. I have to say I am far more cheery than that, in fact I am feeling up beat now I am free of my caste and a few days past my 28 day injection and looking forward to a much brighter time ahead. With four clear days ahead there should be time to do some fun things, or at least relax and do stuff at a slow and reasonable pace.

As I continue to try and clear the decks I discover that my raspberry blowing frog has been broken as he lives on a shelf on a book in the office I can only assume an accident at some point. I swing into action gathering up glue, head torch and other bits and bobs such repairs demand. Its a fracture of his ankles. I dry him and place the glue on one surface and then gently press his broken parts together again, and there we sit for 20 minutes until I am confident that the procedure has been successful. At last I risk taking my hands away and nothing happens. I decide to put him in quarantine, so pop him behind the little garden vase in the lounge where I can keep an eye on him till I go back into the office once it is vacated by my retiring partner at the end of the month.

Its a quiet meander into the evening and as there is no international rugby tonight it will be a mixture of TV drama and any other diversions that appeal, however tomorrow is a different story with the Six Nations Rugby in full swing. As I draft this bit of the blog I remember that while I was idling time post having seen my operation scar for the first time I started another poem, which I put here.

433
Zigzag snake down my hand
but my fingers now free of caste
I can write again!
Ah this pen, this ink
once again can flow 
and I can contain the reptile 
that creeps within.
I'm doing very well
everyone says so
but I know this Serpentine's way,
coiled in the warmth
it takes it time, degree
by insidious degree it expands.
A strange brew of poison
and constriction it moves.
This slinking thing changes
the wonder and magic of my cells
to bring me to my knees.
Its a disease they say,
you cannot fight it,
but if true then why science?
Oh! it's a disease, no point then,
just let them die like reptiles
in the cold of ignorance.
No! That's not the way,
I'll not let go of me,
or the universe
contained within.
I'll fight to live a life,
to create, parent and be kind.
There is an urgency now
my personal viper coils
about my organs
to see my kith and kin right. 
To wage war against  
the black and white,
to stay grey and tolerate 
the ambiguity.
Reasonable, rational, and proportionate
is what I want on my epitaph
once the Asp has done with me. 

                                                                                      433 06-02-2025
                                                                                       post caste removal from hand.