…lovely interactions with some friends today, and isn’t that nice?
Ingrid phoned me this afternoon and we had a lovely chat that went on for about an hour or so where we discussed our problems. And “our” problems too because Ingrid has several of her own that at time make mine pale into insignificance.
And not just Ingrid either. Lots of other people have a lot more problems than I have right now and I do ought to stop moaning about them.
None of the foregoing stopped me bending Alison’s ear when she put in an appearance a little later. She came to see me later in the day too and we had an interesting chat as well. There’s quite a lot going on right now what with one thing and another.
But she’d been on a mission to Germany last week and she brought me another pile of vegan chocolate. That should keep me going for quite a while and I’m grateful.
Liz had messaged me at one point or another during the early evening so we had a lengthy chat as well and discussed a few of the issues that are arising out of my stay in here and which are of considerable interest following my visit to the operating theatre with my virus on Sunday morning.
It was nice to discuss them with several sympathetic ears and I appreciate their patience and forbearance.
Someone else whose ear was much less sympathetic but who nevertheless had to listen to my spiel without much of an option was the doctor who’s on patrol in this ward this week.
She got the “what’s next on the list of excuses?” speech and her answer was to fob me off with the thing about “you need to speak to the doctor concerned” to which my reply was a rather curt “if they don’t ever come to see me, how can I speak to them?”.
Once again, there was no answer to that – not that I was expecting any.
So last night having been to bed at some ridiculous time, I was awake this morning at 04:28. And having had a trip across the room to the bathroom I just lay there counting the minutes until the alarm went off at 06:30.
There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. There was a group of ballerinas who came into the room where I was lying and began to do their exercises. One did a big kick and ended up straddling the rail on the wall. She was stuck there for quite some time. I said that if she wasn’t very happy about where she is and what she’s done, then as far as I’m concerned she can come to where I am and do that any day of the week and I’d be more than happy to see it. That was the first intimation that she’d had of the fact that there was someone present in this room and she and her colleagues were all embarrassed and went off to fetch the shoe if this dancer while I talked to her. It turned out that I was living in the north of England in a home. I went to these events with my half-litre of hot water or tea or coffee etc. For some reason that disturbed her quite a lot. She vowed that she wouldn’t work anywhere at all beyond the mayor’s office in any particular town.
The highlight of the morning was the visit of the doctor. She was the only member of the medical staff (apart from the nurses of course) who came to see me throughout the whole day. Had it not been for Liz, Alison and Ingrid, it would have been an awful day.
Compounded by the fact that my two little students and my Iranian refugee are now working elsewhere on this floor. I seem to have been entrusted into the care of a retired Bulgarian weightlifter. I wonder why.
On the subject of Ingrid though, we both remarked that the only difference between this and a prison is that this door here is open. And that’s a sad state of affairs, isn’t it?
But tomorrow is another day and maybe I’ll be feeling better. My Welsh class might bring me some kind of interest and who knows? The priest might come and see me again.
Things can’t get much lower than they are now.
