steepholm

For some reason I'm unable to post to, or indeed read, Livejournal from this hospital, but my link to Dreamwidth is up and running.

As mentioned in my last, I'm very squeamish, so don't expect to find this account full of surgical details. Suffice it to say that the op went well, and I'm recovering according to schedule. Today the dressing came off and I was able to see the surgeon's handiwork for the first time, at least in a mirror. Some bruising apart, I've got to say it looks pretty good - and yes, much more the kind of thing my brain seems to expect. Mostly at the moment I'm just relieved by the lack of outright gore, though.

I'd been really worried about having anaesthetic, not having enjoyed it all on the previous occasions (twice with gas in the dentist's chair as a child, and I still remember the nightmares I had involving the Red Queen from Alice, and twice by injection on the surgeon's slab, which left me nauseous; I recall trying and failing to direct my vomit into the inadequate kidney dish being proffered by a nurse, and overhearing her complaining about it afterwards, but after all I was only ten; being the only child on an adult ward was not fun). Anaesthetic has certainly moved on in the 38 years since the last of these occasions: it was just Out, and then Awake, no mess, no fuss. A bit like the Last Trump, probably, but without the horsemen.

Since then I've been slowly shedding wires. The day before yesterday my glucose drip went, then the canula, and the things that massage your calves to prevent embolisms, and today I waved bye-bye to my catheter - rather regretfully, truth be told, as I'd got used to not having to get up to pee. But that's progress. Meanwhile, I've graduated from Nil by Mouth to a liquid diet of sorbets and consommé, and thence to white bread, rice, and similarly unfibrous things, and today I'm being eased into normal food. Pumpkin and aubergine madras is on the menu for tonight, and I'm peckish.

Anyway, here's the view from my window. The sea is that big blue wet thing in the distance.

In my Madoka Magica psychodrama, the part played by Sayaka Miki is of course central, and never more so than in her attitude to irrevocable decisions and regret. (No, this is not a post about Brexit.) Before she decides to become a magical girl she worries about regretting it later; having taken that step, the refusal to regret becomes for her a test of her own moral worth, and she constantly monitors herself for signs of it. It's a test she cannot possibly pass in the long run, of course. When the consequences become too painful for her to bear, she cuts herself off from her pain (using magic, but alcohol is an alternative).

I've been learning her signature theme, "Decretum", for some time now, and had hoped to upload a piano version of it before going to the hospital tomorrow, but it's not quite there. So, I'll have to make do with what for my money is the most painful of Sayaka's scenes, which features "Decretum" in full and, appropriately, much cutting off of heads.



じゃ、またね。

All my possessions seem to be winding down in sympathy with me, dimly cognizant perhaps that my life, like the hinged year, is at a turning point. Yesterday I said goodbye to the car I'd had for ten years, waving it off as it disappeared on the back of a "dismantler"'s lorry. (I did rescue Littly My from the rear view mirror first, though.) Later, getting a taxi to the station, my phone slipped from my pocket, taking my numbers with it. The phone itself was a temporary - £15 - replacement for the £20 one that died the other week en route to the States, but I regret the numbers. My PC is currently refusing to talk to my screen, and altogether I feel like some kind of techno-Job, being stripped down to a poor bare forked thing ahead of next week's naked encounter. At the larger level, of course, this may be the day that the UK strips itself down to being (pace Donne) an island. It's hard not to get all Elizabethan-World-Picturey about these weird correspondences of inner and outer, macro and micro.

Not that I've had time to dwell too much. Last weekend I was helping run the Roald Dahl conference in Cardiff, and today I'm in Nottingham to examine a PhD. In between there have been exam boards, a quick visit to my mother, and my daughter making her last appearance before she turns 18 (another turning point - eep!).

At Bristol Temple Meads station yesterday there were many Glastonbury goers set for their annual bout of trenchfoot, but as yet their wellies gleamed green as emeralds. It's Midsummer Eve, a day that is of course ripe for magical transformations. Seeing the revellers (just at the moment I was leaving my phone in the cab) brought back sharply that other June 23rd-4th, in 2007, which I spent being quizzed all night by Tony Robinson in the British Museum, returning in the morning in a train slathered with the mud of Glastonbury's fallen, and going on to work, only to find that one of my friends had died at a meeting that morning.

But, enough. Have a picture of the peaceful Trent, taken as I walked back to my hotel from a nice pub supper yesterday.



There's something very grounding about water.