… half painful hours of agony today in the Dialysis Centre. There’s definitely something wrong somewhere with it being as painful as it is. That’s just not normal.
Still, I’ll find out on Monday for sure when I go for an X-ray. At least the taxi is confirmed for Monday morning, which is good news
So, hoping not to fall asleep in mid-notes as I did last night, I suppose that I had better make a start on writing about my day. Or, rather, my night, because once more I wasn’t in bed at anything like a reasonable hour.
Once I’d finished my notes I loitered around for a while, having found a few interesting websites to read in order to keep myself out of any mischief, and it was once more about 01:30 when I finally crept into bed. Sound asleep quite quickly, there I stayed until the alarm went off at 08:00.
But not asleep. This blasted stabbing pain in the foot has started up again and won’t leave me alone.
It was a struggle to rise up from the bed this morning, and even more of a struggle to make it to the bathroom. I had a good wash and then washed my clothes and hung them up to dry.
Next task was to write out the Mince Pie recipe for Isabelle the Nurse.
I’m not sure why because it’s one of the easiest recipes around here – cut out some circles of flaky pastry dough to fit in your tart mould, half-fill them with bottled mincemeat, and then cut out more smaller circles of pastry to go on top of the pastry and mincemeat in the mould. Prick a hole in them to let the steam out, and bake at 180°C until brown on top.
Nothing can be easier.
Of course, you can tidy them up as you like by brushing the tops with milk to brown them, sprinkling icing sugar over them etc, but all of that is up to you. I grease my mould with margarine so the pies come out easier too.
When she came she was late again and once more, in quite a rush. The bad news is that she can’t come here at 10:00 on Monday to fix my patches. My cleaner is at work so that rules her out so I’ve no idea what I’m going to do now.
After Isabelle the Nurse left, I made breakfast and then carried on reading MY BOOK
Caesar has come ashore, been involved in another pitched battle or two, reached the Thames and forded it to the other side, having given battle to the native British yet again, and then mysteriously returned to the coast.
It’s true that a storm has devastated his fleet and according to HIS MEMOIRS he returned to attend to the affair.
It’s important that it’s all repaired of course, but he doesn’t need to be there to do it. It’s far more important that he subdues the Britons before the winter storms come roaring down the Channel.
One thing that has struck me about this is that he seems to be really concerned about the winds and seems to be able to forecast their arrival with some ease. Was the climate so different and the storms so much more regular 2,000 years ago? Storms can be predicted and planned for in many regions of the World, but was the English Channel like that back in Caesar’s day?
Back in here, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was with my youngest sister and one or two other people. We’d been doing something like fighting dragons. On our way back we came to some kind of takeaway food place. The other girl who was with me, she said that she had bought something for another person because instead of it being €2:85 it was only €2:10 but now she was short of money. I said “I suppose that you want me to buy you the food in here, do you?”. She replied, “no, my order is for me and my sister” so I went in and ordered for me and said that my sister will want the soup, the magnificent soup. She said that she wanted something else too. When they worked out the bill it came to €15:30. My sister actually had that money in her hand because she knew exactly how much it would cost. She handed it over to them – 2 notes of €5:00 and 3 notes of €1:00
How I wish that I could buy something at €15:30 with just €13:00. Maybe I ought to bury my differences with that part of the family, seeing that they insist on disturbing my sleep like this, and send her to do my shopping for me if she can produce this kind of results. However, fighting dragons is a strange thing to be doing during the night.
My cleaner showed up to fit my patches and then once she’d finished we had a good chat until my taxi came – a chat mainly about cats.
It was the guy who seems to be involved somehow in the running of the business who came to pick me up. It was just me in the car so I expected to have a good chat all the way down but for some reason he was quite quiet. I tried on a couple of occasions to entice him into talking, but to no avail.
At the Dialysis Centre there were only five of us, but with two nurses we were seen quite quickly. And painfully, as I have said.
The worst thing about it is that they wanted to run an electrical test to see how much water was in my body. They have to plug some electrodes into patches that they stick on my hands and feet.
“But I have elastic compression socks on” I said
“Ohh” replied the nurse. “If we had realised, we would have told you not to wear them today” So I could have had a good lie-in without the nurse.
With a pain from the dialysis in my arm and this intermittent pain in my foot, I was left pretty much alone. The doctor (not Emilie the Cute Consultant) was on the prowl around the ward but he kept well-clear of my bed. Too afraid of receiving an earful, I shouldn’t wonder.
To pass the time I was reading – firstly a pile of reports about the latest archaeological investigations of Norse sites in North America and First-Nation sites where Norse artefacts have been discovered.
It’s no wonder that there have been so many different claims for the site of “Vinland”, given the widespread discovery of artefacts. One or two have even been unearthed on the western side of Hudson’s Bay.
In fact the more that I read, the more mileage there is in James Enterline’s claim that the original sighting of land in North America was in Ungava Bay but the subsequent voyages recorded in the sagas missed Ungava Bay and sailed into Hudson’s Bay.
Most people though are sticking to L’ANSE AUX MEADOWS on the grounds that “only one settlement is noted in the Sagas, and one settlement has been found”.
However, “absence of evidence” and “evidence of absence” are not the same thing at all, and in any case, the Sagas note a few other camps that the Norse created.
The final thing that I read was a report into salmon-fishing in Newfoundland and Labrador, commissioned in 1909, talking about the history of salmon-fishing in each river from the earliest recorded date. It’s interesting, like all of these books, to see how prolific these rivers used to be, and just how the netting and over-fishing destroyed a whole breeding environment.
To return, I had to wait a few minutes for the taxi to turn up. It was the same driver who brought me and once more, he was very quiet. He certainly seemed totally distracted today, as if he had a lot on his mind and that’s not normal.
We’d come home in a rainstorm and it was even worse back here. But I made it up the stairs to the lift with my cleaner in attendance. The broken handrail has fallen off completely now and it’s dangerous so I’m having to by-pass it.
Back in the warmth I made my tea – baked potato with vegan salad and breaded quorn fillet followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. Thoroughly delicious
So I’ll loiter around for a while and then go to bed. Tomorrow I have bread to make and soup to drink for lunch but that’s about it. Nothing really in the way of culinary activity. But it’s my last day of my holidays because I’m starting work again on Monday as much as I can with all of these hospital appointments.
On the way back in the taxi we were listening to the news, and there was a report of a girl who had been arrested for trying to open the door of an aeroplane.
My driver was listening intently so I told him "on the PA announcement on the ‘plane, they tell you that if you are sitting next to an emergency door you should make sure that you are able to open it, so when I was sitting next to one once in Canada, I went to make sure"
"And what happened?" he asked
"The flight crew went berserk" I replied. "We were at 37,000 feet at the time."
