We thought we'd settle down last night and listen to the Radio 2 Folk Awards via Listen Again. Last year we watched them live on the telly, and we used to listen on the night on R2, but this week I had a music society meeting on Wednesday evening, and the Systems Administrator had disappeared to Ludlow in search of racing (there wasn't any, and English Heritage had closed the castle because of the snow, and the church was locked. Who was the woman bigging up the UK as a tourist destination yesterday on R4 and saying that the weather was good for visiting attractions all year round?). Anyway, we were going to listen to the awards. I'd even managed to avoid finding out who won, apart from June Tabor getting a lifetime achievement award, which was broadcast on the Today Programme at 7.08 on Thursday morning (it is richly deserved as she is the best UK female traditional singer living, but why mention it on Today? What with Syria, Egypt the US election, Greece, the rest of the Eurozone crisis, quantitative easing, UK health reforms, the UK company results season getting underway, not to mention the ruddy Olympics and the English football team manager, you'd think they'd have enough news and current affairs to keep them going. And if they'd exhausted those topics they could always tell us something about what's going on in China, or Africa, or Russia, or Japan (never seem to hear about them nowadays), or Latin America (apart from Argentina's attitude towards Prince William going to the Falklands) Sometimes I think that Today is dumbing down).
Anyway, we were going to listen to the Radio 2 Folk Awards on the telly on Listen Again. Except that we couldn't, because our broadband download speed had dropped to nought point one something megabits per second. I told you that any apologies I owed to BT were only muted, because their service is so crappy so often, even if it was not actually their fault that my computer kept falling off-line a couple of weeks ago. It was only the download speed that was almost non-existent, the upload speed was fairly OK. The Systems Administrator said that this had to be a BT fault, and it was good that it was so bad, because BT would have to mend it. I checked this morning using the useful Broadband Speed Checker site and the download speed was up. To 0.6 Mb/s. It ought not to be under 2.0 Mb/s. If the Today programme is short of material maybe they could give us an update on rural broadband provision. That's 'rural' in the sense of villages around 65 miles as the crow flies from Charing Cross, not the outer Hebrides or Herefordshire.
The good news is that the Lucien Freud tickets turned up in yesterday's post. There's nothing like giving up hope sometimes to make things happen. Also a piece of rose thorn finally worked its way out of my knuckle. I hadn't given up hope of that, since the swelling was getting ever more localised and focused into quite a small lump, instead of taking up my entire knuckle, and it looked as though things were developing. It was a tiny piece of wood, no more than a couple of millimetres long, and it has taken my hand something over two months to expel it. This was the second fragment of thorn, and I'm fairly sure it was the last. My hand began to look calmer almost immediately, in a way it hasn't since the accident, which probably means it is finally free of foreign bodies. I'm glad it's gone, since even I didn't really want an ugly lump on one knuckle that turned purple whenever my hands got cold.
The cats think it is too cold and wet to go out, and I can't blame them. I wouldn't want to walk around in melting snow in bare feet getting freezing slush on my tummy. I don't even want to go out there in wellington boots, and have only been as far as the chicken house and the bird table, and to water the hellebores that are still sitting in their pots in the porch. This morning the cats radiated fractious boredom, and now they have gone to sleep, the big tabby curled around my laptop on the kitchen table, and Our Ginger snoring on the worktop next to the Aga. Later I shall have to evict them and wipe the table and the counter very carefully before making 24 helpings of apple crumble for the music society supper concert. I told the chairman that I'd cleaned the kitchen in readiness, but she just smiled at me brightly and vaguely and said surely everybody had animals in their kitchens.
Showing posts with label thorn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thorn. Show all posts
Friday, 10 February 2012
Thursday, 1 December 2011
down at the doctors
We had a music society committee meeting last night. Consensus was that the brass quintet at the last concert had talked too much, and it was agreed that our guidance notes to performers would be amended, so that talking was only permitted to expand on the already ample programme notes (the chairman is very proud of the programme notes) or to explain technical features of the instruments. This was great fun, the nearest I've got for ages in real life to playing the When I'm Dictator game. (You must play that. Charlie Brooker is going to execute people who talk in cinemas after the film has started. When I'm Dictator there will be adequate rainfall, but only at night, and people wearing ugly shoes will be sent to re-education camps.)
The programme for the winter of 2012-2013 is taking shape. The bookings secretary had narrowed down the dates when we could potentially have a well-regarded and moderately expensive string quartet, which at extra cost could be expanded into a quintet, with clarinet, viola or horn. The chairman wanted to know what was with the horn, and the secretary explained that a modern composer had written a horn piece especially for the quartet, who had given its world premiere. 'What sort of music is it?' enquired the chairman 'Is it very modern?' The bookings secretary, looking weary and chosing her words carefully, said that the quartet's agent said that it was very rhythmic, but without much in the way of melody. 'How long is it?' demanded the chairman 'Our lot can stand ten minutes of that sort of thing, but not half an hour'. I must have looked especially agonised, because she then looked at me and asked if I wished to say something. I said that I was just imagining spending half an hour listening to a horn piece with no discernable tune, and thinking how lovely clarinet quintets were. Everyone agreed that the Mozart clarinet quintet was indeed lovely, as was the Brahms, and we agreed to forget about the horn. Sometimes it is good for arts groups to have someone who doesn't mind being the voice of middlebrow conservatism. I'm sure the others were all secretly relieved to be let off having to pretend to be that musically adventurous, even the bookings secretary, and we'll sell more tickets with the clarinet.
I took my hand to the doctor this afternoon. I thought I'd better on Monday, when my knuckle turned purple and my entire hand throbbed, though with hindsight I think that was the cold. I rang the doctor's surgery, who said they did not have any appointments for Wednesday. I asked if I could have an appointment for Thursday, and was told that they had not yet released the diary for Thursday, and I would have to ring in the morning. I really thought the NHS had been told to stop playing that sort of silly buggers. I made sure I was up on Tuesday morning in time to hit the phone at 8.00am, and managed to get through and get an appointment, but not everybody is well placed to call their GP surgery at eight on the dot. If you are travelling to work then, or getting the children to school, or have just walked into the office, sitting with the phone in your hand and hitting the repeat dial button until you manage to catch the moment when a line is free could be tricky.
There was good news and bad news about the hand. The good news is that it's not infected, the joint and tendons seem fine, and the problem seems to be in the overlying tissue. This means that using it, while painful, probably isn't making anything worse. The other good news is that the doctor agreed that there was an issue, and said that she would refer me to the hand clinic if there was no improvement in two to three weeks. She thought that something must still be lodged in there, that my hand was busily encysting, and would in due course expel. The bad news is that, if it doesn't fix itself, she wasn't sure what the hand clinic could do. They don't like digging around in hands, all full of nerves and tendons, looking for tiny objects. Two to three weeks puts it so close to Christmas that in practice that means go back if things aren't better by the New Year. Come back before then if it gets worse, she said kindly.
I spent the day doing gentle, surface, non-knuckle threatening weeding, and cutting down the stems of Helianthus salicifolius, an excellent perennial sunflower, that runs about a bit and makes tall, wavy stems clothed in willow-like (naturally) leaves. In autumn it has little yellow flowers, but the leaves are the point. It was beloved of Christopher Lloyd, and I first encountered it in his books. It isn't the easiest thing to get hold of. I've suggested we should list it at work, but the boss doesn't seem keen. There were mutterings about it not doing well in a pot, but I'm not sure that's the real reason. They had it at Langthorn's, the last time I was there.
The Systems Administrator has a sore throat and a rich and fruity cold. This is a house of wrecks.
The programme for the winter of 2012-2013 is taking shape. The bookings secretary had narrowed down the dates when we could potentially have a well-regarded and moderately expensive string quartet, which at extra cost could be expanded into a quintet, with clarinet, viola or horn. The chairman wanted to know what was with the horn, and the secretary explained that a modern composer had written a horn piece especially for the quartet, who had given its world premiere. 'What sort of music is it?' enquired the chairman 'Is it very modern?' The bookings secretary, looking weary and chosing her words carefully, said that the quartet's agent said that it was very rhythmic, but without much in the way of melody. 'How long is it?' demanded the chairman 'Our lot can stand ten minutes of that sort of thing, but not half an hour'. I must have looked especially agonised, because she then looked at me and asked if I wished to say something. I said that I was just imagining spending half an hour listening to a horn piece with no discernable tune, and thinking how lovely clarinet quintets were. Everyone agreed that the Mozart clarinet quintet was indeed lovely, as was the Brahms, and we agreed to forget about the horn. Sometimes it is good for arts groups to have someone who doesn't mind being the voice of middlebrow conservatism. I'm sure the others were all secretly relieved to be let off having to pretend to be that musically adventurous, even the bookings secretary, and we'll sell more tickets with the clarinet.
I took my hand to the doctor this afternoon. I thought I'd better on Monday, when my knuckle turned purple and my entire hand throbbed, though with hindsight I think that was the cold. I rang the doctor's surgery, who said they did not have any appointments for Wednesday. I asked if I could have an appointment for Thursday, and was told that they had not yet released the diary for Thursday, and I would have to ring in the morning. I really thought the NHS had been told to stop playing that sort of silly buggers. I made sure I was up on Tuesday morning in time to hit the phone at 8.00am, and managed to get through and get an appointment, but not everybody is well placed to call their GP surgery at eight on the dot. If you are travelling to work then, or getting the children to school, or have just walked into the office, sitting with the phone in your hand and hitting the repeat dial button until you manage to catch the moment when a line is free could be tricky.
There was good news and bad news about the hand. The good news is that it's not infected, the joint and tendons seem fine, and the problem seems to be in the overlying tissue. This means that using it, while painful, probably isn't making anything worse. The other good news is that the doctor agreed that there was an issue, and said that she would refer me to the hand clinic if there was no improvement in two to three weeks. She thought that something must still be lodged in there, that my hand was busily encysting, and would in due course expel. The bad news is that, if it doesn't fix itself, she wasn't sure what the hand clinic could do. They don't like digging around in hands, all full of nerves and tendons, looking for tiny objects. Two to three weeks puts it so close to Christmas that in practice that means go back if things aren't better by the New Year. Come back before then if it gets worse, she said kindly.
I spent the day doing gentle, surface, non-knuckle threatening weeding, and cutting down the stems of Helianthus salicifolius, an excellent perennial sunflower, that runs about a bit and makes tall, wavy stems clothed in willow-like (naturally) leaves. In autumn it has little yellow flowers, but the leaves are the point. It was beloved of Christopher Lloyd, and I first encountered it in his books. It isn't the easiest thing to get hold of. I've suggested we should list it at work, but the boss doesn't seem keen. There were mutterings about it not doing well in a pot, but I'm not sure that's the real reason. They had it at Langthorn's, the last time I was there.
The Systems Administrator has a sore throat and a rich and fruity cold. This is a house of wrecks.
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
the thorn beneath
I shouldn't have gloated about how nice it was to have a whole day to get on with the garden. Today I came back from my Pilates lesson via the Colchester Walk In Centre for minor ailments, and that was the afternoon gone. I can't complain about the time spent going to Pilates, since I choose to do it. I like the teacher, and the exercises seem to make the difference between being a chronic back pain sufferer and living a normal active life. At school I was unutterably hopeless at gym lessons, and throughout adulthood I have avoided most forms of organised physical exercise, but Pilates isn't too bad. At any rate, it is preferable to the alternative.
The trip to the Walk In Centre was because yesterday as I was weeding around a rose I felt something prick me through my gloves and stab me in the left knuckles. I thought I could see a dark speck in the centre of the (tiny) wound, suggesting that a thorn had broken off in there, but couldn't get anything to pop out when squeezed. It isn't very easy to squeeze your knuckles (try it), especially when watched by three chickens. During the night my hand began to hurt, but I couldn't be bothered to get up and start fiddling with it in the small hours. I inspected the tiny wound again after my shower this morning, and still couldn't find anything there, but my knuckles had reddened and started to swell. By lunchtime it had got visibly worse, so I thought I might as well see a member of the medical profession and start on antibiotics today, as wait for two or three days and start then after the symptoms had got really bad. Also, the Systems Administrator said I might as well go today because otherwise I would only spend the evening worrying about it. That was probably right, as you do hear of the very occasional unfortunate gardener who ends up losing their hand or entire arm after a tiny scratch goes septic.
The GP surgery receptionist said they were fully booked unless I was an emergency. I thought I wasn't an emergency, but that I would like to get medical attention before I became one, so I called at the Walk In Centre on the way back from my lesson. The parking is confusing (it's free, but that's not immediately obvious), at the point when I arrived I was the only person sitting in the waiting area, the rolling screens said that the time to be seen was running at half an hour, and I reckon that's what it took, which was no worse than a visit to the GP, who often runs half an hour late. The nurse was pleasant and professionally reassuring and agreed with my view (so clearly I thought she was a very sensible woman) that to have worsening symptoms the day after getting a scratch was not normal and suggested there was infection. She gave me a prescription for a week's supply of Flucloxacillin, which she said was the best antibiotic for skin. Given that the injury was caused by a plant she didn't want to dig around to see what, if anything, was left in there, as it will dissolve in situ or find its own way out.
Reading the leaflet for the Flucloxacillin (I'm nerdy that way) the list of things it treats, besides skin, is so long that at the end of a week I doubt I'll have a bacterium left in my body. This is not necessarily a good thing, but the main thing is that I don't want my left hand to turn into an agonising mass of infected flesh that has to be amputated, followed by the rest of my arm two days later. The nurse warned me that the hand might look worse before it looked better, but that the sign to watch out for was if I got a red streak up the length of my arm. That'll be A&E time.
Although I rather wish I hadn't spent the best part of 45 minutes in part of Colchester Hospital and another 20 minutes in Asda waiting for their pharmacist to put a pot of Flucloxacillin in a paper bag, the episode in no way puts me off gardening. The girl in the pharmacy said it was a very good reason not to garden, but it's just one of those things. Like sprains if you do sport, or sore feet if you wear fashionable shoes. Or, I suppose, a one in four chance of death if you climb K2. All hobbies have their hazards, and their rewards.
The trip to the Walk In Centre was because yesterday as I was weeding around a rose I felt something prick me through my gloves and stab me in the left knuckles. I thought I could see a dark speck in the centre of the (tiny) wound, suggesting that a thorn had broken off in there, but couldn't get anything to pop out when squeezed. It isn't very easy to squeeze your knuckles (try it), especially when watched by three chickens. During the night my hand began to hurt, but I couldn't be bothered to get up and start fiddling with it in the small hours. I inspected the tiny wound again after my shower this morning, and still couldn't find anything there, but my knuckles had reddened and started to swell. By lunchtime it had got visibly worse, so I thought I might as well see a member of the medical profession and start on antibiotics today, as wait for two or three days and start then after the symptoms had got really bad. Also, the Systems Administrator said I might as well go today because otherwise I would only spend the evening worrying about it. That was probably right, as you do hear of the very occasional unfortunate gardener who ends up losing their hand or entire arm after a tiny scratch goes septic.
The GP surgery receptionist said they were fully booked unless I was an emergency. I thought I wasn't an emergency, but that I would like to get medical attention before I became one, so I called at the Walk In Centre on the way back from my lesson. The parking is confusing (it's free, but that's not immediately obvious), at the point when I arrived I was the only person sitting in the waiting area, the rolling screens said that the time to be seen was running at half an hour, and I reckon that's what it took, which was no worse than a visit to the GP, who often runs half an hour late. The nurse was pleasant and professionally reassuring and agreed with my view (so clearly I thought she was a very sensible woman) that to have worsening symptoms the day after getting a scratch was not normal and suggested there was infection. She gave me a prescription for a week's supply of Flucloxacillin, which she said was the best antibiotic for skin. Given that the injury was caused by a plant she didn't want to dig around to see what, if anything, was left in there, as it will dissolve in situ or find its own way out.
Reading the leaflet for the Flucloxacillin (I'm nerdy that way) the list of things it treats, besides skin, is so long that at the end of a week I doubt I'll have a bacterium left in my body. This is not necessarily a good thing, but the main thing is that I don't want my left hand to turn into an agonising mass of infected flesh that has to be amputated, followed by the rest of my arm two days later. The nurse warned me that the hand might look worse before it looked better, but that the sign to watch out for was if I got a red streak up the length of my arm. That'll be A&E time.
Although I rather wish I hadn't spent the best part of 45 minutes in part of Colchester Hospital and another 20 minutes in Asda waiting for their pharmacist to put a pot of Flucloxacillin in a paper bag, the episode in no way puts me off gardening. The girl in the pharmacy said it was a very good reason not to garden, but it's just one of those things. Like sprains if you do sport, or sore feet if you wear fashionable shoes. Or, I suppose, a one in four chance of death if you climb K2. All hobbies have their hazards, and their rewards.
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