Igenlode Wordsmith

I went to my GP because I was told that I really ought to get a mysterious pain in my left hand checked out which has been troubling me since before Christmas -- I have been putting it off because I know that you have to jump through a vast number of hoops to see a doctor nowadays, and I always try to avoid doing so for anything that might go away of its own accord. I went to the GP surgery in person to try to book an appointment in the hopes of being able to simplify the process.

( telephone tennis ) Well, I feel vindicated; it wasn't worth the effort (and when the telephone assessment eventually comes I shall probably be given a brush-off -- I can't even inflict pain on myself by deliberately prodding and poking at the area at the moment, which makes remote diagnosis pretty much impossible).

I might as well have sat at home with my intermittent stabs of Something Wrong and let the doctors get on with the patients who actually do need urgent help, as opposed to wasting everybody's time, including my own...

Apparently I've managed to burn my leg on my hot-water-bottle again. At least there is no blister this time, just a painful red patch, but I suppose I shall have to abstain from bathing for some time, since that turned out to be the fatal mistake previously :(

I can only conclude that it happens because I clench myself so tightly around the bottle in bed!

When I tried to change the batteries on my wall-mounted light I discovered that those had gone rotten as well (explaining why the light had stopped working!), and in fact there was liquid and not just crystals in the bottom of the battery box. Possibly not actual battery acid, because it didn't burn me when I handled the batteries, but I really cannot see why I would be getting condensation on the corridor wall. Because it's next to an unheated room? But I've never noticed the wall itself being damp...

Fatalistically I applied the same lemon juice treatment to the battery light as I did to the clock, and didn't even attempt to clean off the residue afterwards, and oddly enough it didn't seem to cause any problems at all. I must say the (LED) light is incredibly bright with new batteries in it -- it wasn't much more than a nightlight glow before, but then it did get left on all night on a couple of occasions by mistake...

Finally finished the current chapter, which I spent so long in writing that on re-reading it I detected two continuity errors with its earlier scenes (although I'm still not certain where I'm going to put the boundary between this and the previous chapter, having decided to end the latter before the actual chaining-up because it was running so long and then having decided to end this one in real-time after the bath scene rather than attempting to carry it through into a summary of Christine's continued life with Erik). We're currently halfway through plot point six.

What I'm unsure about at this point is whether I now write a chapter from Raoul's point of view revealing that he is alive and well and shipwrecked, or whether I leave the reader (and Christine) in the belief that he is dead for several more chapters. ( Read more... )

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After three weeks and a week on intensive antibiotics the burn on my leg now has an ugly (and still oozing) hole in the centre; if it lasts another three weeks it will officially be an ulcer (discontinuity of the epidermis and dermis in the lower limb of more than 6 weeks duration). I suppose I shall have to go back to the doctor...

My leg has pretty much healed, save for a large round burn mark on my shin; it swelled up into the most gigantic spherical blister for four or five days and then went on weeping slowly for a few days before drying up. Fortunately nobody ever sees my shins, so they didn't even know there was anything wrong.

Trying to bathe while keeping one leg cocked up in a chilly way on the side of the tub is quite a challenge, especially when it comes to soaping underneath! I managed it twice...

Work continues on the still-unnamed Swedish story, in which Christine has finally met Kulla the cow (who isn't very impressed with an intruder in her bed); I'm tempted to go with Frökenstjärna as her (unofficial) name for the calf — 'Little Miss Star' — but they're not on that sort of terms yet! Her feelings about Erik are all over the place, from crawling horror to an optimistic "I can talk him out of this", though without the canonical pity, at least as yet — it's been a little odd writing this in conjunction with the similar confrontation scenes from "Blue Remembered Hills", originally written years ago but of course drawing on the same limited Leroux source material in its attempt to get Erik's logic/speech patterns...

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Chapter 19: Breath for Breath

What she was doing could kill. Cris knew that. Knew that Erik was taller than she was, and stronger than she was, and very, very fast, and that she could not afford to hold anything back at all.

She hit him as hard as she could with a little sob of breath, striking out at the place behind the mask where the scalp showed bare and vulnerable, and tried not to think of that fragile shell of bone, and the tissue of that great mind helpless beyond... She’d held off this moment for too long. She could not fail in her one chance now.

Erik went down with an animal grunt, mask falling askew, and did not move. Cris choked back a pang of horror at what she’d done and fled to Rall, pulling frantically against the bands that held him.( Read more... )

I've been reading Sherlock Holmes again. You can tell, can't you?

Unfortunately, the deep wound in my thumb is still not healing up the way it should; I had to walk a couple of miles in to hospital today (this on top of a thirty-mile bike ride — the reason why I wasn't cycling; I'd had enough!) to get it looked at again, as it had been gradually swelling up to the extent that the half-healed edges had started to split open.

The nurse who saw it said that she didn't think it was infected, but that for whatever reason the layers of skin below had started to separate. Anyway, it's a confounded nuisance, and I now have it done up in an immense dressing all over again, and have to take baths with a plastic bag strapped over my hand again and so on...

The rats, of course, think it's all a tremendous mistake, and either sink their little teeth into it in the hopes that it might be edible, or else kindly try to groom it off for me!