Opsimath and Eremite

06:27 pm: Silly season
Am I right in thinking that this is a rather slow news day?. On radio 4 news, this item was followed by one about mountain-climbing extreme cellists.

Tags: daft news

02:41 pm: A fascinating book post(?)
I've been feeling oddly flat, now that I am no longer an actual invalid, trying to get work done and distracting myself. So, I think it's about time I did another book list. This time, I thought I'd just list the ones on, beside and around(and under) my bed. About two thirds of these are library books, for what its worth.

Books being actively read;
The Judgement of Paris; Manet, Meissonier and an Artistic Revolution by Ross King. This is all about the early days of the Impressionists, and what a git Manet was. My overall impression has been of sympathy for all their poor bloody wives.

Migraine by Oliver Sacks - I first read this in the early 1970s, when it had just come out. I think my copy came from the school library, and it was a tremendous help at the time, putting into context the attacks I had just begun to suffer, which my mother (and her mother before her) had described as "bilious attacks". I'm reading it slowly because I fear that descriptions of attacks might trigger one, also because it reminds me so vividly of how bad they used to be when they started.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon - I've just finished this, definitely an exception to my avoidance of fiction, but this was a real sitting-up-too-late-in-bed read. A alternative-world hardboiled detective story set in the temporary Jewish homeland of Sitka, Alaska, where the language is Yiddish. Chabon is such a good storyteller, which is pretty rare nowadays

Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand - Another of my favourite authors, and another good storyteller, also I love her sensual descriptions of the world.

Dry Store Room No. 1; The Secret Life of The Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey, a behind-the-scenes account of the Natural History Museum, by the man who has looked after their trilobites for the last thirty years. A slightly painful read, since this is probably as near to working there as I will ever get, made more painful by his repeatedly comparing the place to Gormenghast.

Forgotten Fruits; A Guide to Britain's Forgotten Fruits and Vegetables by Christopher Stocks; a nice little book on the stories behind old-fashioned fruit and veg varieties, like the Warwickshire Drooper plum, the Orange Jelly turnip and the Green Pear of Yair.

Bully for Brontosaurus- by Stephen Jay Gould. Essays on evolution, being read piecemeal; Gould is always entertaining, but a bit hard to take in a big lump.

Books on the bedside table or under the bed - not actively being read.

These divide into two groups; the ones I've started but become bogged down in half-way and refuse to give up on. I seem to have lost a lot of my patience with fiction, but am reluctant to give up on a book until I've finished it; Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner and Passing Under Heaven by Justin Hill are both the sort of books I would have just swallowed whole a decade or so ago. Maybe I won't give up on them because I see it as a sign of age. The other stalled books are Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk, which I'm bogged down on but want to persist with since I'm planning to go there next year. There is also a copy of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; Our Year of Seasonal Eating, an account of a year spent being as self-sufficient as possible on a small farm. I bought this as a birthday present, and had to read it before posting, and now I should send it, since I've finished reading it and the birthday was in April. I love Kingsolver's books, and thought I would enjoy it more than I did, probably because a book on regional eating and food production is by definition regional, and her region is Virginia, where, although she goes on a bit about restricted growing seasons, conditions seem to be better than in North London.

The other group not being actively read at the moment are the ones I keep for comfort reading, to be dipped into when I'm too tired to read anything long, or I'm just having a short lie-down. A guide to London museums and galleries, a little picture book of commercial images from China that I bought at the disappointing V&A China design show, East Wind Melts The Ice, a beautifully-written book on the seasons and Japan, Sylvia Townsend Warner's diaries, Darwin's Watch by Terry Pratchett, Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart (evolutionary theory in the Discworld) and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, all of which can be relied upon for a couple of pages of interest or pleasure.

There seems to be a lot about evolution and taxonomy here, for some reason.

Tags: books

08:51 pm: After the long build-up, the six-week appointment was over surprisingly quickly. The doctor, another member of my consultant's team who I'd never seen before, was pleased with my progress, and professed himself mildly surprised that I was still using even one crutch. I'm cleared to carry heavy stuff, sleep on my right side, sit in swivel and rocking chairs, swim and walk about without a stick, but not to go skiing just yet, which is just as well since for that I would also need a pile of money and a death-wish.

I spent about ten minutes with the doctor, and about an hour getting copies of my x-rays, and if I could get it to read, I could show you a lovely picture...

ETA They weren't loading onto LJ because they are tif files, apparently, but for anyone strange enough to be interested, I did manage to put them on Flickr, here. That is a sizeable hunk of metal, isn't it?

Tags: agility, hip replacement, mobility, x-rays

09:59 pm: Getting better
Improvement continues; yesterday's achievements were a shower and walking down a flight of stairs using my feet alternately, rather than always going down on the right (good) foot. Much more than they sound, especially the shower. I had been washing at the sink in the bathroom and in bowls (what my mother used to describe as washing "up as far as possible, then down as far as possible, then washing your possibles"), but it is nice to be clean all over at once. I'm also going to try and get a load of washing down to the laundrette.

Tomorrow I have my six-week appointment at the hospital, after which, I hope, I will have no more excuses for not getting a proper job. Ulp!

Meanwhile, here is an over-reacting potto (I think); this just makes me smile for no particular reason.



Tags: hip replacement, over-reaction, stairs, washing

08:29 pm: A Slightly Busy Sunday
The weather forecast has promised that by the middle of next week temperatures will reach seasonal averages and it will actually feel summery! It certainly doesn't now. Maybe if we get a bit of warmth and this blasted wind lets up, my tomatoes will have a chance to grow properly. The plants have set several fruits, a huge one-inch whopper on the Purple Cherokee plant and several pinhead-sized ones on the cherry tomatoes. There are also some things on the tomatillo and pepper plants that might also be fruit.

This afternoon, since has been alternately sunny and dull, but windy throughout, I stayed in, watching TV (a rather bank-holiday programme of Call Me Madam followed by The Great Escape, and while I watched I managed to complete the adorable baby monkey, as promised, with his dad.



Tags: sock monkey, weather

05:18 pm: My mobility continues to improve, as evidenced by my dancing around the living room on my two crutches this morning when Jonathon Ross played Kool and the Gang.

Since I did finally get paid, I headed out for the market after this, and bought another large bag of socks for monkey production. Stock of the stripey ones I prefer was a bit low in adult sizes, so I ended up buying several pairs of very small sized socks this time. Expect some adorable infant monkeys in the near future.

Tags: dancing, sock monkey, socks

09:17 pm: After charging around on Saturday, I felt tired, but had no particular problems with the hip, and on Sunday I ventured onto the tube for the first time since the operation. I had been avoiding the tube because of all those steps, but I finally realised that there were more steps in my own home than in any tube station I've ever visited. The tube carried me to Clapham, where I met a large group of my semi-family, ate birthday cake and played Pass the Bomb (I include the link to prove that it is a game, rather than some sort of terrorist plot). We always seem to end up playing games there, so as to include the one child, and it is usually great fun. This time, I won, after a tense final showdown between me and Jerry. It was a lovely afternoon, and I got home at about 10 pm, went straight to bed and slept wonderfully.

Today, I met up with yet another person who did the same restoration degree as I did, and we had yet another conversation about the impossibility of finding paying work in conservation. Somehow, it wasn't especially depressing. I've been feeling remarkably comfortable and happy these last few days, probably from a combination of the pain-free hip, nice weather, and pleasant company. This must be what it feels like to be well (although I still have a slightly sore throat). Tomorrow, I think I'll take myself out for a (short) walk on the heath.

Tags: happy, pass the bomb, sociability

05:37 pm: Mobility and free buses
Today I went out with only one crutch, rather than the remarkably inconvenient pair I had from the hospital. I've been using just the one at home for a while, but indoors there are plenty of things to grab onto if needed. Using one crutch frees up my left hand and makes things much easier, although that does also include shopping and therefore carrying, so when I got home, I spent a good while checking up on the internet to see if I was doing anything wrong. I seem to be safe, but perhaps I should lay carrying so many things. With any luck, I should be able to go out with just a folding walking-stick in my handbag in a month or so. The whole thing feels so much better I can't quite credit it. The cold also seems to have receded, either because the sun came out or because the episcopal honey did have some curative powers.

Since I had a lot of small trips to make today, for shopping and library visiting, I ended up making a total of seven separate bus journeys, but for some reason the oyster card readers on all the buses I used had broken. I wonder if this happened all over the city? It's only just occurred to me that I could have had a more interesting itinerary than Crouch End Woolworth's, Archway library and the fabric shop on Seven Sisters Road, but there you are.

Another old classmate came round yesterday evening, and I now have another monkey commission. Maybe he'll even pay me for it...

Tags: free buses, mobility, walking

02:40 pm: Weekends out in London
Just discovered to my immense pleasure that this year, for the first time in ages, the Thames Festival and London Open House weekend (no catalogue available yet)won't clash, so it will be possible to get to both of them. Every previous year I have had to pass up Open House for the festival, which is my ritual end-of-summer weekend. This year I have a family wedding to go to, so I won't actually make it to the Thames Festival, but I can strongly recommend it to anyone else who can make it, even if only for the night carnival procession and the fireworks.

Tags: london open house weekend, thames festival

10:57 am: Oh good grief, she's going on about her health again...
Woke up on Monday with a scratchy throat, sniffles and a slight fever, and the conviction that I was Very Ill Indeed. I checked the scar and was relieved to see that there was no infection there, so I reconciled myself to just having a cold, although I don't get colds very often. The weather (dark, wet and unseasonally cold) didn't help. My head seems to be stuffed with cotton wool, and I've spent the last days flopping about and falling asleep at odd intervals, sewing in a desultory way, and sucking on spoonfuls of honey to soothe my throat. The honey is from the Archbishop of Canterbury's garden at Lambeth Palace, so perhaps it has some special curative properties.

Tags: head cold, honey, weather

04:06 pm: I just managed to get out in the tiny sliver of good weather between patches of heavy. At the moment, it looks and sounds as if someone is throwing buckets of water against my window. On the bright side, the water was warm on my bare feet when I went out to unblock the terrace drain just now (first time it's blocked this year).

Tags: rain, weather

12:03 pm: Thinking myself ill
Sunday was spent in advanced pottering mode, doing a little washing, a little sewing and a lot of reading Saturday's papers. Towards the end of the day, I became convinced that the pain in my left calf was a deep vein thrombosis that would kill me in my sleep. Alarmed by this, I didn't sleep much, and headed off to my GP's surgery this morning, where I discovered that it's only a muscle cramp. Quite a relief. Now what can I worry about...

Tags: health, imagination

09:46 am: "Four meals away from anarchy"
The electricity went off at about 8 last night, causing my computer to flicker alarmingly, then die. I had the wit to collect candles while it was still dimpsy, so I was able to spend a contemplative evening reading a book about plant-hunters and eating strawberries by candle-light after watering the plants. It is odd how food tastes different under dim light, and even more different in darkness. The street was completely dark outside, apart from pin-points of candles in one of the flats opposite. and I went to bed unusually early, even for me. Rather pleasant for one evening, I suppose, but it did make me realise how much we rely on electricity, especially electric light; the convenience store across the road from me had to close when the power went off, since they have little or no natural light. What would we do when the candles ran out?

I think at the back of my mind there has always been the possibility that All This would eventually grind to a halt, or run out of power. This seems to be a generational thing; several of my friends were convinced that we would all end up being self-sufficient (or starving to death) somewhere in the country. Many of us made a point of learning skills that would be useful for our future survival; I know a lot about wild foods, herbs and poisons, and one of my friends learned to spin and weave wool. Now perhaps it is all going to happen after all, but are we all getting a bit too old to handle it? At least I know how to make candles and tallow dips - my niece and the g-d don't have a clue about anything like that, so perhaps I might survive on my knowledge anyway.

In a coda to this, I woke up at about 2.30 am, and decided, since the power was still off, to put a towel under the fridge to catch the drips as it defrosted (with the tub of excellent pistachio ice-cream). I'd just done this when the fridge light came on, and looking out to see the lights on the rest of the street I saw two men on the pavement outside just closing a street grating, getting into an electricity company van and driving off.

Tags: candles, electricity, survival

10:17 am: A Dirty Mind Is A Perpetual Feast...
I haven't just been lying around eating ice-cream and neglecting the hoovering this last week. I've also made a start on a stockpile of sock monkeys for selling (probably on eBay). I am using a sort of assembly-line process, making batches of bodies and arms separately, and I piled them up onto the back of the sofa to keep them out of the way. So yesterday, when the g-d came in, recoiled and said "oh my God! Hundreds of Porn-monkeys!", I didn't quite see it at first.

( But now I think perhaps she might have had a point... (Especially the pink version on the right with argyle legs) )

I have finished some; this one (Desmond) I made for the niece to take to Austria with her.

And this eminently respectable person is Elspeth Simian, a retired teacher, made for the g-d, as a present to another teacher.


Tags: sock monkeys

09:15 am: Slightly Interesting
I decided to relax the diet while I was recovering from the operation, which might have been only partially a good idea, since I had already put on two pounds in hospital. Unless the new hip is heavier than the old one, which seems unlikely, this suggests that I am capable of getting fat even on hospital food. Anyway, I find that most of the stuff I used to eat in quantity I can now take or leave, which is reassuring, but I have noticed myself craving more milky stuff that I don't normally like; milkshakes, cheese, ice-cream (ahem). Is my body looking for calcium to repair the bone? Is this the best excuse for eating ice-cream ever?

Tags: dieting, food

07:05 am: My Exciting Weekend
I did indeed get to the library on Saturday, managing to change my books (Terry Pratchett's Fifth Elephant for comfort reading and a graphic novel of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere that turned out to be rather rubbish), borrow the DVD of The Golden Compass (surprisingly good) and CDs by Cara Dillon, a new discovery for me. I also bought strawberries, raspberries, meringues and (ahem) Ice Cream, which we ate all mashed together last night as Eton Mess. Lovely!

Yesterday I had a flying visit from the niece, on her way from Glastonbury to a month's work at a summer camp in Vienna. Fortunately she'd stopped off at her home to scrape off the worst of the mud and change her clothes, and now she's off to catch a 9.30 flight from Stansted. It was surprisingly nice to see her, since I didn't get on too well with her as a child, but I like her more and more as she grows up. She has the remarkably strong family resemblance we all have, directly traceable to the Irish grandmother, but she is much taller than me and with nicer hair, as well as being much more confident than I was at that age, but I forgive her.

Tags: books, family, food, library

02:39 pm: Progress so far
Still pottering about in a convalescent sort of way. Yesterday, I managed to get across the road and took the bus into Crouch End with Lauren. There we discovered that the Budgen's supermarket delivers shopping, bought a big bag of groceries and had lunch at a nice little Italian cafe. All pretty pleasant and not too tiring at all.

Today the district nurse (plus student) came to remove my staples. I apparently have a very nice, neat clean scar, which is healing nicely. Don't worry, I won't be posting pictures. They put a light dressing on it, which I can take off on Monday, and then presumably I'm on my own. The g-d heads home on Friday, but will be coming over at weekends to do my heavy household stuff.

I'm definitely getting a bit fed up with the sitting around at home - the weather is lovely, and there are plenty of things I could be doing if I was just a little more mobile. For one thing, there is the North Lambeth Parish Fete at Lambeth Palace on Saturday. I am strongly tempted to go, but don't think that I could realistically handle the public transport. Maybe I'll just try to get to the library.

Tags: convalescence, summer fetes

03:58 pm: I'm getting a bit bored with this convalescence lark. I'm pottering rather feebly around at home, wasting a lot of time on the internet, and constructing endless sock monkeys. Physically, I feel fine, but the hip is a bit stiff, the operated leg is a bit swollen, and I still get tired surprisingly fast.

The weekend was rather pleasant, though - the g-d stayed at her boyfriend's place on Saturday night, so I was able to stay up late and talk to myself all I wanted, and on the Sunday I was overrun with visitors. In the morning, my brother and niece turned up, with lettuce and basil plants and a pile of reading matter. No sooner had they gone than the g-d and boyfriend returned for lunch, followed rapidly by Lauren, her boyfriend and another old classmate and her sister, making it rather more people than I've ever had in the one room here before. I definitely needed a lie-down after that.

Yesterday, I managed to get out of the flat and across the road to the shops yesterday, but I had to lie down afterwards. Today, I washed my hair and had the wound re-dressed by the District Nurse, then had to have another lie down. Exciting

Tags: convalescence

07:41 am: After a week in hospital, I still find myself waking unusually early, although at least I'm not being offered laxatives at 6.30 am any more, and my sleep has not been interrupted by the patient from hell suffering "pain such as no-one has ever suffered before".

I think I rather overdid it yesterday, so today I will be taking it very easy, helped by the appalling weather - rain and dullness again. A shame, since today is the Highgate Village Fete, which I would be going to under normal circumstances. I can recommend it to anyone in the area, especially if they want to buy cheap plants, as there are several excellent stalls, including snowballjane's favourite herb stall.

One interesting side effect of needing two crutches to get across the living-room is that I have effectively become a quadruped, and taken to carrying things in my mouth. I keep a little carrier bag in my dressing-gown pocket so that I can transport pills, books etc. between rooms. This morning I found myself carrying a newspaper upstairs in my mouth. I've turned into Lassie...

Tags: health, pills, quadrupeds, rain

06:11 pm: Back again, and upgraded!
Hallo, folks. I'm finally back, and feeling pretty good. I actually got out of hospital yesterday afternoon, but I've been sleeping most of today, delighted to be back in

The operation apparently went well, and I'm already pretty mobile. I did ask one of the registrars what sort of hip I had, but he gave me a long string of technical terms that I didn't quite catch, although it did involve the phrase "metal on metal bearings", so I feel justified in using my cyberman icon. Apparently on the evening after my operation I texted every number on my phone with an interesting message telling them that "I have plenty of morphine and inflatable boots", but apart from that I behaved myself. The hospital was mostly excellent - I was in a room on my own for the first night, then in a ward with only three other beds, one of them empty. The two other patients were a lovely woman who had the same op as me, and who was visited by her devoted husband every day ("first time we've been apart in 63 years") and the Patient From Hell, a monster of whining selfishness who I think might have been a training exercise designed to bring nurses to breaking point. The nurses all passed with flying colours and patiently refrained from strangling her even a bit(although once I could get out of the bed on my own I did think about it). We were later joined by a woman who had fallen on the last day of her holiday in China and been flown home after two weeks of Chinese hospital food. I had many visitors, not a great deal of pain and even the food was edible. I ought to thank everyone here for all their good wishes, and Jade for posting while I was away.

Now all I have to do is sit around, building up the sock monkey empire. The main problem, I suspect, will be the temptation to overdo it too early, since I am already more mobile than I was before the operation, despite needing a pair of crutches. I was in noticeably less pain almost immediately afterwards.

Tags: hip replacement, hospital, recovery