The saddle awaits.

The flat is awful quiet after three weeks away.
You would have thought that nearly a month in the country would have been peaceful and full of nightingales and cream teas
As it is I had thee weeks of hospitals, travelling to them and back again. Doctors, travelling from them to hospitals. Chemists travelling to them from the doctors before the hospitals.
Having to relax my rigidity has not been easy. Pre-back-op on August 7th, would have had me shouting the loudest about MRI scans, x-rays and rectal examinations. Post-back-op and I have nothing but admiration for the Kent and Sussex Hospital, Mr. Yo, Hurstwood Park Neurological Centre and their team of surgeons, not to mention the army of extrodinary men and women who nurse, clean, manage, help, laugh, comfort, calm, feed and mend hundreds of patients – including my daughter – who are ill, in pain, demanding and often old.

I sit here in my lovely Battersea flat in a state of shock. That three weeks have gone so fast with so much trauma woven into them.
I have left the daughter in the hands of two gentle men. The old git is in the Czech republic watching films on telly before he gives his last two performances in some open air Shakespearean setting. He will be back to take over the caring on Thursday.
This afternoon we had visitors. Bee’s ex piano teacher. The deliciously eccentric Caroline James who used to smoke 50 fags a day and entertain us through a haze of cigarette smoke and passion. Her son Henry, used to sit on the stairs and stare at B loving her smile and her curls as she bashed out chords, scales and whatever else Caroline threw at her. Today, ten years down the line, the musician and romantic met up, on the settee, she in post operative agony and he in a fetching skinny tie and jeans.
They talked about Henry’s home made Valentines card she kept and their futures, not together, although both mothers would be rather pleased if they did form a liason.
I left a crowded living room at 8.00. Felt emotional that I couldn’t be there to administer but if I don’t get back to LBC soon i’ll lose my bottle and next months rent.
I’ve Skyped America,( Thank God for my wonderful Sybil who has helped me every single day from his seat in Hollywood), Brov, ( Thank God for my wonderful husband who has not been there every single day) and East Sussex by mistake. I have unloaded three weeks of clothes, books, cabbage and newly cut spinach from my friends allotment into the flat fridge. You know what I mean….I have done the washing, set up my new blender, which cost me the air fare to Mustique, and set the alarm for 7.00 tomorrow.
Of course I am nervous about the show I haven’t listened to the news, read a paper or watched Jeremy Paxman for three weeks. Should I be questioned on the most effective treatment for drop-foot or how to deal with negative comments in a hospital ward I would get an A* as it is the Great British pubic – where the ‘ell is the the ‘L’ – need more than my medical adventures since July 23rd.
Suffice to say my daughter is recovering, my husband is recovering, and thanks to this cup of camomile tea and Manuka honey I am recovering. I am now ready for bed.
I have been hopeless keeping up to date with my journal and this blog, but all being well I am back in the saddle.
Wish me luck for tomorrow, and I send it to you for whatever you are doing.