… bad, miserable day today. Not quite a relapse but it was the nearest thing to it.
Last night I went to sleep fairly early and slept right the way through until the alarm went off at 06:30. There’s a very vague feeling of being awake at some point but I really couldn’t remember.
After my early morning orange I had a look at the dictaphone. Sure enough, there was a couple of files on there from some point during the night. I awoke in a hospital ward dreaming about having some sprouts fried in butter with mashed potato and a quorn fillet. This dream was so realistic that when I awoke at about I dunno 01:40 I was quite ready to sit up and eat it. The cooking was brilliant and the smell was gorgeous. It was really nice and I was really looking forward to it.
I was up arguing yet again with a group of people, boys and girls, about all kinds of different things. We’d started off somewhere or other and had to walk an enormous distance. It originally began with me being at home, the phone ringing and whoever answered it taking what sounded like a taxi job. She asked me “how long would it take me to get to Rome?”. I thought “at least 3.5 hours” so she told the person and they seemed to accept the time so we had to get the car ready, find a map etc. It was an area of Rome called Dommodossola which is actually a town on the Italian border between Switzerland or Austria or somewhere like that. I had to go to the Rome Railway Station East at Dommodossola in Rome and pick up these people who had been mistakenly told that there was a train north but there wasn’t. This was the only way that they could return home. We took the job and I prepared things and had to set out to walk there. It was a complicated route – we were in these villages and moors and on the fells. One village seemed very much like another, one road seemed like another. We took short cuts through people’s houses. Some kind of argument broke out about something to do with history. I found myself on my own in this village high on the hills on my way to Rome.
On a more depressing and urgent note the battery indicator on my dictaphone has started to flicker, an indication that the batteries are going flat. And the spare batteries and battery charger are still at the Hotel de France in Brussels where I left everything when I was admitted to hospital.
But never mind. I sent an urgent SOS to Alison which she acknowledged.
Yesterday I mentioned that I’d written a letter about the wicked events of yesterday afternoon. This morning the houseman, or housewoman in fact, came by to check up on me. Of course with it being a Bank Holiday in Belgium today there are no specialists or Professors about but I gave my visitor the letter and she promised me that she’d leave it on the desk of her Professor.
As for what happens next we’ll have to see, but if she really did pass it on I’m prepared for a fight. I’m not being treated like that.
That was all of the excitement as far as the medical staff goes. No specialists and no Professors means no examinations so nothing is going to happen until Monday at the earliest. It’ll be a nice relaxing weekend, I hope.
Later in the day Alison turned up. She’d remembered my batteries which was really nice of her. We had a good chat which was also very nice but it’s the last one that we’ll have for a while as she’s off to the UK tomorrow on family business tomorrow for most of next week.
During the course of the day I’ve found myself slipping into the abyss. I’m not sure whether it’s my illness having a little relapse or whether it’s the Black Dog that’s awoken. It might be the former of course but if it’s the latter it’s hardly a surprise with everything that has gone one just recently.
But there was something that brought a smile to my face this evening. When they brought round the evening meal, the lid of the coffee pot – we have little 500 ml thermal coffee pots each -was screwed on so tightly that it took me 5 minutes and quite a wrestle in order to loosen it.
Actually it was one of the young nurses who had screwed it up so tightly and she didn’t look as if she had the strength.
“Woe is me” I thought to myself “that I didn’t have the strength to undo it”.
It reminded me of the story of the man who went to the doctor. “Do you remember the pills that you gave me to give me strength?”
“Ohh yes” replied the doctor. “Did they work?”
“I don’t know” replied the patient. “I can’t get the top off the bottle”.
I’ll get my coat.
