Blood Test first thing this morning, and they haven't rung me yet - so fingers-crossed. I had antibiotics on the 1st, and my level is probably haywire. No messages yet though - I could be lucky!Shortly afterwards we nipped over to Arnold because it is a 'Karen day' and we like to get out of her way. She can have her favourite Century Radio on loud, and sing to it. Her singing voice is very good and we told her once she must be good at Karaoke - "only when drunk" she replied. Bless.
In Arnold we went our separate ways for an hour. I like browsing the charity-shops and the book shop, while Y prefers looking for children's clothes and things. Mind you - she managed to find 4 books in the book shop. In the Cancer Research Shop I found a treasure treasure treasure. A favourite boyhood book was this Brother Blackfoot which I read and read endlessly and when I spotted it on a shelf, my crabby old defective heart leapt. My copy, long since gone, had a red and white paper dustjacket with same picture as shown. As if I'm worried about a missing dust-jacket! The picture of the teepee and the camp-fire showed the sort of place I longed to be. I've always assumed the book cover illustration started off as a lino-cut but if not, I'm sure someoned will put us right.
In the chapter with the featured illustration, John, as prospective bloodbrother has to prepare himself to have his little finger chopped off, while Apau measures up the job. All very appealing to an eleven year old. Inside the fly-leaf is inscribed "To Tony, Christmas 1946" so maybe Tony was eleven too. Enough whimsy. Joan met us on the Main Street and we went to The Tree Tops for lunch which was very pleasant except for the fact that an elderly lady collapsed onto the floor. The staff covered her with a coat and two people knelt by her side. An ambulance was summoned and actually arrived very quickly. But in the interim everybody just carried on eating. I suppose , as there was nothing anybody could do to help, it made sense. Just seemed strange.Then we went back to Joan's for some tea and eventually made our way home - via the pretty route.
Oh dear ! I spoke too soon re my blood. The Anticoagulant Clinic has just rung and, as predicted, my level has gone so haywire that I have to take extra warfarin now and go to Queen's Medical Centre Blood clinic at 9.30am tomorrow for a further test and possibly more warfarin and a heperin injection. The young lady was really helpful, and when I told her that we were keen not to miss our 'Holbein to Hockney' class, she snuck me in for an early appointment at 9.30am.
Ho Hum..............................
I still fancy the tepee and campfire thing (although I haven’t done it for some 15 years or more) hence my half-longing to take a trip down the Nile in a felucca. But S and I do not see eye to eye on holidays, partly, I think, but certainly not entirely, because of her ambulatory limitations; she wants to be in a city, drinking coffee and going to musicals; I want to be in the wilds looking at beetles. That said, I am unlikely to venture far anyway as I am becoming more and more of an agoraphobic hermit. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, I do not exaggerate.
ReplyDeleteLino-cut or wood-cut, I think, and I wouldn’t know how to tell the difference; perhaps woodcuts have more subtlety? The Community Workshop is considering putting on a one-day wood-cut course which I intend to attend if I dare put my Mr Mole-like nose out of the door. I would aim to do something like your enjambed gravestone:
Only ever do
one thing at
once, and pr
eferably less ... for instance.
The pictures of the book enlarged well (without the little magnifying glass but with the symbol which seems to work in precisely the same way) and I was easily able to read the text, which seems very well constructed. My first thought was that the illustration and your explanation all seemed a bit on the dark side for a pre-teen boy. but perhaps I am being squeamish. After all, I spent happy hours pulling the legs off Craneflies, boiling worms in a boot-polish tin lid over a candle, and cutting bees and wasps in half with a pair of scissors (in flight earned bonus points). But I never blew up a frog with a straw – I couldn’t even watch someone else do it. And I have nearly grown up now.
The TreeTops episode sounds very British to me but I have no idea what folk from other cultures would have done. My 'Creative Writing' instinct and recent exposure to Monty Python leads me to think that they would need to have been desperately hungry to … (no, I am not going there!).
Chopped off fingers, collapsed old women, out-of-control blood count: what a sombre medically-slanted blog today! I hope they successfully bring you down off the ceiling yet again and that you enjoy a lengthy period of stability.
On a slightly different but no more savoury note:
Yesterday I considered using the word ‘scatologically’ but, thinking it best to check the aptness first, I referred to my Longman Dictionary. Rather to my surprise:
scatology n 1 the biologically orientated study of excrement …
And on that note …