this way up

This is what they did.  On the day of the operation a nurse arrived wielding a big black felt-tip pen.  She daubed a large arrow directly onto the flesh at the top of my thigh.  The arrow was pointing downwards, towards the knee that required some urgent attention.

A little later, a doctor came along with a Permanent Magic Marker (these have a slightly copper tinge to the black ink) and drew over the arrow, several times, reinforcing the original mark.  This meant that the emergency helicopter had not arrived during the afternoon, and the scheduled op (last of the day) could go ahead.

An anaesthetist knocks me out in a prep room decorated with drawings of bunnies and puppies.  A surgeon looks several times at the arrow which is big and black on my skin, then cuts open the correct knee.  He drills five holes in the kneecap.  He pulls up the snapped tendon and sews the frayed ends through the holes in the bone.  He then inserts a wire bent into a figure- of-eight to stop the leg bending too far.  This is a decision made on the spot, after an assessment of the damage.

A team of nurses spends the next four days administering drugs and good humour, while a pair of physiotherapists teach me Crutches 101 and introduce me to a leg brace locked at zero degrees. 

I get fed three times a day with cups of tea in-between, and dosed with pain killers at regular intervals.  I start to heal, and five days later leave the hospital.

This is the NHS.  It is not the  Daily Mail drooling over choice cases of medical negligence, and for me, the arrow daubed in Magic Marker sums it up.

The NHS sounds a silly idea, and can look out-of-date, but it works.  Cheap too, especially if you buy the pens in bulk.

The best blog I follow is written by Dru Marland. She has an unbeatable formula.  She does distinctive and interesting things, then writes them up  in a distinctive and interesting  way. 

I don’t know many writers who spend their days swimming the River Avon or photographing storms from the Bristol rooftops.  The writers are writing,  a repetitive action with a limited core of intrigue.

 Got any photos to go with that?  The desk, the wall, the page.  We’re done.

Dru illustrates her blog with her own photographs.  These are unique to her site, adding another good reason to go there.  Dru was the first person to point out to me,  I think correctly, that blogs are an image-led format.  Many of the more entertaining blogs are extended captions to intriguing images. 

Writers can make the mistake of thinking it’s all about the words.  That’s what we’ve trained ourselves to think, and we’re in the habit of working up our sentences.  There’s a reluctance to ship out a blog that hasn’t been honed in the same way as any other piece destined for publication.  Honing takes time, and effort, but Twitter might be different.  It’s shorter.

I feel confident about honing statements or questions of 140 characters or fewer.  I don’t stand to  lose too much time or sleep.  And there are no pictures.  Truly, the tweet may be the more literary medium of the two.

Friday 30^th April, 6.00pm – 7.30pm in the Wilson Studio at the Royal Court, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS

The National Academy of Writing and the Garrick Trust is staging a rehearsed reading of extracts from four plays written by National Academy of Writing students. 

Extracts to be performed:

Sidekick by Rena Brannan

Set in the Korean community of Los Angeles, Sidekick is the story of the Hwang family and the secrets that they keep.

 The Men Outside by Roger Noble

Frank the gangster is getting on – he knows he’ll have to hand over his petty empire to one of his deputies. When the son of one of them visits he sees a paranoid old man, unrealistic about his abilities and increasingly unable to cope.  But the old man isn’t finished yet.

 Some Garden by Federay Holmes

A man can’t help it if his wife grows fat on stolen greens.  A pregnant woman will do anything for a vegetable. And a strange child is born who wants the moon.
“I don’t want to get heavy.  Things just happen – you know?  Take Us.  One minute we’re free, next minute we’re fat.”

 Harold’s Cafe by Geoff Mills

Guardian journalist Patrick visits Harold’s cafe in this surreal comedy with a dangerous edge.

 
These script-in-hand performances will be directed by theatre director Jenny Stephens, who works with the writers on developing their plays.

Monday 22 Feb 7pm UEA

I’ve enjoyed the continuing positive reaction to Becoming Drusilla, but we’re still spreading the word.  On Monday 22nd Feb Dru and I will be in Norwich at UEA to give the LGBT History Month Lecture.  There is a full month of events in Norwich and we’re providing some, though not all, of the T.

It is very nice to be invited, and these opportunities to keep going with the book remind me of a misunderstanding I had with Dru on the walk.

When we go walking we drink a lot of tea, which means that we’re often overtaken by other walkers while brewing up in a cosy hollow or on a friendly flat rock.

As the more earnest walkers struggle past I used to shout out ‘Keep Going!’ in what I took to be my jovial, even convivial voice.  As the days went by, Dru grew increasingly gloomy.  This surprised me, as she would usually support any attempt to make the world a more jovial and convivial place.

A family of Germans march by in the rain.  ”Keep going!” I say, and Dru smoulders me a look.

‘What’s wrong?  I thought you liked it when we talked to strangers?’

‘Yes,’ Dru said.  ‘But you keep on telling them to keep going.  How rude.  You should try asking them to stop.’

not enough information

I had an email from Dru that wasn’t from Dru.  It was her daughter, ambushing Dru’s email account like a policeman at the door  – Dru had spent the night at A & E, she was being kept in hospital, she had to have an operation. 

This news came across like smoke signals from the young:  the smoke was bad but the  signals were cheery.  The message ended: 

P.s dru’s mobile is out of charge so don’t try to ring it L

What were the Indians trying to say?  How bad is L?

I wouldn’t say I panicked, but I googled Bristol Hospitals and started with the Royal Infirmary, thinking I could work down from there.  Right first time.  They did indeed have a Drusilla Marland on the wards, and yes, I could speak to her on the old-fashioned telephone.

Except Dru wasn’t exactly on the wards, she was somewhere north of Planet Nebula.   She was on the wrong side of most of Bristol’s Royal painkillers, but at least they’d done their job.  Those gallstones were sending out pain that was no longer reaching the brain.  Dru tells me (because she is still in there) that an operation is imminent. 

She came back to earth just once, to report that the Trav was parked outside and had a ticket on it. 

I did what everyone does with health problems and looked gallstones up on the Internet.  They are very painful, the internet says, and the condition is twice as likely to be suffered by women as men.  The operation is usually successful.

At Schloss Marland, I’m glad to say, normal transmission should shortly be resumed.