Polar Air and Prancing Lambs.

I’m sure I’m right in saying that this is the coldest Beltane Eve since I moved here in 2006. We had plenty of late afternoon and evening sunshine as the sky cleared – and a modest sunset on which to feast the eye while searching fruitlessly for the still-absent bats – but the north easterly wind was frigid enough to warrant the donning of my old winter coat while I was feasting, searching, and filling the bird tables for the early risers in the morning.

But I did get a good look at the new lambs this afternoon. I went through the small copse at the top of the lane and there they were in the field beyond, jinking and frolicking in true new lamb fashion. And then I heard one of the ewes bleat (did you know that every ewe has a distinctive voice? Contrary to popular belief, all the baas are most certainly not the same.) I noted that she was number 27, and then followed her gaze which was directed intensely towards the edge of the big wood on the far side of the field.

Sure enough, two little white woolly bundles came galloping as fast as their deceptively sturdy legs would allow. They were number 27s too, and soon they joined the summoning ewe in dutiful obedience. Once in position the group moved off slowly, the ewe leading and the babies walking side by side behind her like an attentive rearguard ready to protect their dear mama from any creature of ill intent which might venture from the wildwood. Surely, I thought, these little lambs must be fierce enough and strong enough to be a force to be reckoned with. At least they probably think they are.

On Being Appreciative.

I’m in a better mood now than I was earlier because I just got rid of one of my more uncomfortable pains by playing hot water on it in the shower. I’m full of good ideas like that.

So now it occurs to me that the next time I go into hospital, or the doctor’s surgery, or have a visit from one of our district nurses, I must remember to say thank you to them for working in the NHS. They make life so much better for us poor folks, yet still we complain.

The Greatest Bully.

Something else which came to my notice today is the fact that next Wednesday will be the 12^th anniversary of my moving into this house. What a different person I was then – under the financial cosh, but so much fitter, stronger and more confident of an eventful future.

It has been said that there is no bully who cannot be beaten, and I’m sure that’s true with just one exception. Time is the ultimate bully, the one who cannot be beaten by man, beast or metaphysical agency, the tyrant who drives us on remorselessly to the end of our days and ultimately the end of everything. There is no facing up to time; no blow strikes anything but empty air; no grumble stands the slightest chance of melting a heart of black diamond. We can only take the whip, hold our fading bodies upright for as long as possible, walk on with resignation, and accept our inevitable fate with as much equanimity as our natures will allow.

Today has not been a good one in the injured body department.

On Things Missing.

It occurred to me today that tomorrow will be Beltane Eve. Those who know me are familiar with the fact that I have a fire on Beltane Eve to offer respect to the forces of nature and to welcome the now-burgeoning new growth that is swelling inexorably into summer. Well, there won’t be any Beltane Eve fire this year. My body is still a long way short of being able to cut the wood, set up the fire on the ground, light it and keep it tended. Maybe I’ll pay token homage by lighting a candle in the front living room window which faces the garden, the fields, the river valley and the high hills beyond. Maybe the forces of nature will excuse my timidity for one year.

Something else I noticed this evening was the fact that the flower buds on the apple tree are not breaking yet. It’s turned cold here again after that brief burst of high summer which so delighted us a week or so ago, and I suppose the forces of nature – at least those which apply to the apple tree – are sensible enough to put everything on hold until a more propitious time. Here’s hoping it won’t be long.

But then I was reminded of previous Beltane Eves when I had the fire at the bottom of the garden and marvelled at the sight of the apple blossom illuminated by the light of the flames. I remember writing about it on this blog, and I remember also writing about the magical lights which appeared on the lane, in the trees, and over the field opposite the house one year. That was a very special Beltane Eve, and maybe those days will come again when I’m fully recovered.

And then there’s the lone bat which I saw hunting over the garden recently. It’s made no further appearance since, so maybe Mother Nature is keeping the bats on hold, too, and maybe they’ll return as my physical faculties progress. As I said, here’s hoping it won’t be long.

Resisting the Urge.

I’m dancing in my computer chair again, to the sound of Deep Forest and their Forest Hymn this time. (I’m nothing if not adaptable, you know. It was Irish last time. This time it’s pygmies singing about the rain forest.)

But my extant kidney is complaining as usual:

If it isn’t bad enough losing the companionship of your twin brother, now you send me bobbing up and down like a cork in a washtub. Do stop it.

OK; forbearance is due in the circumstances. But it’s a nice tune nonetheless. You can listen to it here if you want to. You can even imagine me dancing in my computer chair, although I doubt it would be worth the effort.

(I seem to be in a better mood at the moment than has become usual of late. Better make the most of it. Tomorrow it might be back to the Sargasso Sea on a flat day.)

Respecting the Memory.

It’s an odd thing, but my three periods of incarceration in the Royal Derby Hospital have started to seem like a distant memory. And you know what we do with distant memories, don’t you? We view them through a soft filter of rose-coloured gauze and imagine that they were nothing like as bad as they seemed at the time. And that’s irrational because however they seemed at the time was how they were at the time. Perception is, after all, the whole of the life experience. But memory is composed of such shifting sand that I wonder why we ever bother to rely on it.

I’ve also wondered what became of my dear old kidney. I don’t like to think of it as having been disposed of indecorously in an incinerator, or some dirty old receptacle near the back entrance where the big yellow wheelie bins were always queuing to be relieved of their unwholesome burdens. If I thought it had been fed to a stray dog I would be quite content, but I don’t suppose it was.

Maybe I should write to the hospital and ask, and maybe they will apprise me of the details in a respectful and sympathetic manner so that I might visit the spot and pay a level of respect commensurate with the dear old organ’s long and dutiful service. I don’t suppose they would do that either. It’s more likely that they would send a man in a white coat and a green van to collect me and deposit what’s left of my body in a place not too far from the missing kidney.

On Ignoring the Risks.

There’s a tendency to assume that racing drivers must be a little crazy in order to do what they do, risking life and limb every time they go to work. Apparently it isn’t the case. I read once that several studies done on them indicate that racing drivers are actually unusually calm, well balanced people, at least when they’re out of the car. And yet I still wonder whether they must be lacking imagination and a certain type of awareness. In most us, those faculties naturally produce the projection of imagined possibilities which have us stepping back well out of the way of extreme risk.

But today I wondered whether the same might be true of surgeons. When they go to work – which is rather more frequently than racing drivers – it isn’t their own life and limb they’re putting at risk, but somebody else’s. Does that mean that they, too, are lacking imagination and a certain type of awareness, or might it be that they are low on compassion so they fret less about the consequences of their actions on somebody’s life? Or could it be that they learn to put up a barrier to such feelings so as to avoid unbearable stress every time they take up the scalpel?

None of these possibilities might be true, of course, but it’s an interesting thought.

Spotlighting the Good Bit.

I made my first trip to Ashbourne today after an absence of more than five weeks. (May the thrill of adventure never cease…)

I’ll leave out the negative bits such as the speed the vehicle was being driven at and the potholes in the road, both of which factors combined to cause my brow to furrow and my poor injured abdomen to complain in abject anxiety. And I won’t mention the chilly air and the rain which fell incessantly the whole time. And I’ll ignore the cobbled alleyways which shook my poor injured abdomen for a second time until it threatened dire consequences if I didn’t find somewhere to sit. They’re all the miserable bits, so let’s do the nice one.

I did find somewhere to sit actually, in my good old Costa coffee shop where a cup of Americano with cream and a muffin are two of the rare pleasures available to me at the moment. And do you know what? The young woman who served me remembered to give me a fork for my muffin rather than the regulation knife as dictated (rather ineptly in my opinion) by company policy.

Isn’t that something? They remembered me and my predilections. They even said that the manager had noted my absence.

So here we are with the God of Small Things again. It’s odd how I take the major things like the existence of the NHS for granted, and yet the fact that some person remembered that I like a fork with my muffin is a matter of great significance to me, and one for which I am truly grateful. I even told them so.

A Friend's Sole Failing.

Being stuck in hospital last night I had no alcohol to fortify me through the dark, empty hours. I missed it. I said to my temporary best friend, Sabs, before she went off duty:

‘Any chance of getting me a couple of double scotches?’

She laid her head on her arms and said: ‘I wouldn’t know how to do that.’

‘Sabs,’ I replied, ‘if you really want to get your angel badge grade one, you might try.’

‘Sorry.’

Tonight I have scotch but no exemplar of the nursing profession to afford me confidence in making it through the night. Oh well, life’s never perfect, is it?

And it occurs to me that I might make the effort to change the subject.

On Being Fastidious.

You know, I’ve never been the touchy-feely sort. I don’t do hugs and was never one for sitting on a sofa with my arm around somebody while watching a TV show. My view has always been that human bodies are private to their owners and not to be brought into mutual contact except in certain fairly specific circumstances. I realise that such a sensibility (for it’s hardly a rational point of view) tends to irritate women and is utterly weird, but there it is.

The problem with bodies, you see, is that they’re only nice and wholesome on the outside (and very often not even that.) They’re pretty disgusting on the inside, and I’m not at all comfortable with getting close to what is only the width of a few very thin layers of cutaneous tissue away.

And that’s why I never understood how some people can spend their lives physically handling other people. It’s why I could never have been a doctor, nurse or paramedic (maybe a physio, but I’m not sure.)

This was brought home to me most uncomfortably during my short stay in Ward 202 of the Royal Derby Hospital. On several occasions I saw a nurse walk across the ward carrying a bundle of something white – presumably dressings – which was heavily stained with blood and maybe hidden fragments of some other even more unsavoury matter. (No, it wasn’t actually dripping, just in case you’re wondering.) I watched with mounting incredulity as she deposited the said… stuff… in a receptacle, removed her one-use plastic apron and latex gloves, deposited them in the same receptacle, and then went calmly back to filling in some book or other. She had such an air of nonchalance that it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d started eating a bag of crisps to celebrate s job well done. Mostly she didn’t, but she might have…

And then I would start thinking about excretions and weeping excrescences, and was glad that food was either a failing memory or a distant prospect.

On the other hand…

I saw lots of Chinese lady doctors during the most recent incarceration, and was led to wonder whether I might make an exception in their case. It’s an intriguing thought given my fascination with Chinese ladies, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever find out.