… an executive decision.
And for the benefit of new readers, of whom there are more than just a few these days, an executive decision is one that you make where if it all goes wrong, the person making it is executed.
My decision is that I am not taking off my puttees until I’m sitting on the edge of the bed ready to climb in last thing at night.
Especially after last night where I was sitting in a pool of blood for ages trying to stop the flow that was pouring out of the hole in my leg. My blood is so thin with this Kardegic powder and this Binocrit injection that it pours out non-stop without even an attempt at slowing down.
The idea with thinning out my blood is to make it easier for my heart to lift it but like anything else, solving one problem created a bucket-load of others and we just go round and round in circles. Do I have a heart attack or do I bleed to death?
So there was I trying to slap on plasters and in the end it was one of the big ones that the nurse uses. Not that it stopped it very much, but it stopped it enough that I could crawl into bed.
Glad I was to be in there too, late as it might have been. And I was asleep quite quickly too.
At about 06:15 I awoke but ended up going back to sleep until the alarm went off. I was disorientated at 06:15 but that was nothing to how I felt at 07:00. It took me several minutes to gather my wits which, seeing how few wits I have these days, took longer than it ought to have done.
First thing was to inspect the damage. And the place was in rather a mess after last night, and so were my clothes and slippers. So after washing me, I washed everything else
Eventually I made it back in here and I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. I’d been on a shopping trip. On the way there in the car I was listening to a radio programme about mistreated children. They were talking about children who had been abandoned and placed in foster homes, how their parents had made all the wrong decisions, like their whole houses were furnished by IKEA, all this kind of thing. It had been bad money management that had put these families into difficulties. The conversation went on to talk about children who had no possessions and were never allowed to do anything. They thought “what kind of life did these children have to live? How awful it was”. They were busy discussing this. In the meantime I’d turned up at this shop in Crewe at the Market Precinct place. I hadn’t actually bought anything but I’d walked through and was going happily outside. It started to talk about people who had gone to the aid of these children even in adult life. I thought of Percy Penguin of course but I must have been totally distracted because just after leaving the shop I felt a hand on my shoulder. I thought “God what have I done now?”. It was the manager of the shop, very apologetic, saying that I’d been charged £15:00 too much. I wasn’t sure how that was possible because I hadn’t been near a till and I’d not actually bought anything at all. However I was interested to see what his story was so I followed him back into the store and up to one of the cash points where I thought tha we’d be able to sort out any problem.
Once more, I’ve no idea what’s going on here. I’m not likely to be going round the Market Precinct Shopping Centre in Crewe any time soon, that’s for sure. I can’t really tie that in with anything else but as for the story about mistreated children, we all have our own tales to tell. I’m totally convinced that this idea of a happy home with happy parents and 2.4 children and 1.8 cars is nothing but a total myth and exists nowhere except in the minds of people who shoot margarine adverts for television.
The nurse was dismayed that I’d used one of “his” plasters on this bleeding. And he was even more dismayed to find that the leg started to bleed as soon as he ripped off the plaster so he had to use an extra one this morning. It’s not his day, is it?
But he managed to clean off the dried blood on my leg that I couldn’t reach. I really am in a right state, aren’t I?
After he left, I had breakfast with the last of the bread and then a leisurely start to the day. I wasn’t in any great hurry, which seems to be the story of my life right now.
Once I’d wound myself up, I paired off the music for the next radio programme and segued the pairs, and then carried on writing the notes. And by mid-afternoon I’d finished them all. That included stopping for lunch at some point in the proceedings.
With no bread left, I decided that I’d make some more this afternoon. But I’d also seen a strange recipe for making a kind-of chocolate bread, or maybe chocolate muffins with yeast. For want of anything better to do, I thought that I’d give it a try.
The bread was quite easy to make of course but this chocolate stuff was bizarre. It’s rather like an oil cake but with water and only a small amount of oil, and then with added yeast.
My home-made loaf of bread was perfection itself but these chocolate bun things are, well, interesting. It’ll be a few days before I tell you what they are like because they are planned as a replacement for my flapjacks, the supply of which is temporarily exhausted, so I won’t get to them until Monday or Tuesday.
But they certainly look as if they might be nice
Tea tonight was delicious. I need to make space in my freezer so I had some of my lasagne with steamed veg in a cheese sauce. My vegan lasagne definitely worked and I was impressed with that, almost as much as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.
So that’s everything for today. I’m going to unwind my puttees and then go to bed. Tomorrow morning I must send an order to LeClerc. I don’t need much but it still needs to be sent
But talking about home-made bread, when Liz, Zero and a few others of us went to Chester Zoo all those years ago, we saw a loaf of bread in one of the cages.
And so we asked one of the keepers "why is that loaf there in that cage?"
"It’s quite Ok sir" he replied. "It’s bread in captivity"
