Today we are discussing contemporary earthworks and he finds a great deal of amusement in some of his colleagues having mis-identified some contemporary slit trench for a Neolithic burial pit. I shall be waiting with bated breath for the omelette sur le visage<\/em> moment.<\/p>\n Seeing as it’s my birthday today I emulated my namesake the mathematician and did three-fifths of five-eights of … errr … nothing for a couple of hours. I just stirred a few papers round with no great urgency and spoke to several friends on the internet, who had contacted me to wish me well, which was nice of them.<\/p>\n My cleaner, who had popped in earlier for the list of medication, came back with some of the supplies and to fit my anaesthetic patches. Then I had to await the taxi.<\/p>\n Late again leaving, the other passenger in the car was even later so we had to drop him off first, right across town at the Clinic. So I was very late arriving for dialysis.<\/p>\n Not only that but there were six other people who had arrived simultaneously and I was as usual the last. Then we had to run through a handwashing demonstration to waste even more time.<\/p>\n Plugging in was slightly less painful than normal, and then I reviewed my Welsh, although there’s no lesson tomorrow as it’s half-term.<\/p>\n The doctor in charge came to see me. There’s no real indication of anything that might be causing these sweats, so he said.<\/p>\n He did have two items of good news for me and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.<\/p>\n Firstly, this new dialysis centre in Granville is all systems go and will be open within a year. Secondly, as things stand I would be one of the patients to be transferred there. So that will save me about four hours per week.<\/p>\n While he was there, I tried to negotiate a reduction in hours. My weight seems to be stable right now compared to how it was, so I wondered if instead of reducing the machine’s power they could reduce the hours that I have to spend.<\/p>\n His reply was that it’s not as easy as that but he’ll check the analysis and see what it says.<\/p>\n While I was there I had a video chat with my niece, her husband and one of her daughters in Canada. That was a lovely surprise, one of the many highlights of my day.<\/p>\n When they finally threw me out we had the pantomime with the minibus but I managed to enter it in a slightly more dignified way than the other day. Leaving it is still the same old circus though.<\/p>\n It was a very exhausted me who made it into my apartment and now that I’ve had my stuffed pepper and written my notes I’m off to bed. I’m exhausted. I have all these goodwill messages to answer but that will be tomorrow. I can’t keep my eyes open.<\/p>\n But seeing as we have been talking about my namesake the mathematician … "well, one of us has" – ed<\/em> … he once told be "I have a completely irrational fear of negative numbers"<\/em><\/strong>
\n"So what do you do?"<\/em><\/strong> I asked him. "Is it a serious problem?"<\/em><\/strong>
\n"It’s extremely serious"<\/em><\/strong> he said. "So much so that I’ll stop at nothing to avoid them."<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n
