News from Nowhere

Well, that did not go as planned. We spent a pleasant, if low-key, birthday, as posted last time, and went to bed anticipating plenty of fun for the following day. But in the night, durham_rambler began to feel unwell. In retrospect, he has had a lingering overnight cough for several weeks, and has begun complaining of shortness of breath, in terms of being less young and less fit than he was: but by the small hours of Wednesday morning, he was coughing constantly, gasping for air, sweating - bad enough, in short, that we called an emergency ambulance, and by five a.m. we were in A&E.

As soon as they had him hooked up to an oxygen supply, he started to feel better. He has been extensively scanned and measured, and enjoyed, everytime he was asked his date of birth, being able to give it, with the comment that "Yesterday was my birthday!" which earned him plenty of extra birthday wishes - in which context, I should thank everyone who left greetings for him in my previous post: I have pointed him in that direction! He was transferred within the day to the ward adjacent to A&E, and is still there, still on oxygen, though he now has a portable cylinder, which means he is able to visit the bathroom, which has cheered him up considerably. He was also allowed to shower, though unplugging him from the oxygen left him a little breathless.

D. has persisted with his planned visit, and been immensely helpful about driving me to and from the hospital. I sent him out to shop for his own breakfast requirements, since shopping was part of the post-birthday outing plan which we had to abandon. Another abandoned plan was for the three of us to join D.'s sister and brother-in-law for lunch at the High Force Hotel and possibly a walk after. I have sent D. off to do this on his own, and I will visit durham_rambler this afternoon, when visiting is permitted: one of his colleagues from the City of Durham Trust has just phoned to offer me a lift, and I have accepted, with much gratitude (there are buses, but this is so much easier).

I asked durham_rambler if there was anything I could bring him this afternoon, and he asked for his shoes. I refused: they are heavy, and he doesn't have much storage space. He clearly anticipates being sent home at any minute, and I take this as a good sign: not because I think it likely, but because it means he is feeling much better. I'm sure when he is discharged, it will be without warning (and he will need door-to-door transport, so he'll be fine wearing his slippers); and I know that they can send him home with a portable oxygen cylinder. But I suspect they'll want more of a diagnosis than You seem to have a chest infection, let's see if it responds to antibiotics...

We live from hour to hour, visiting time to visiting time. He has his phone, and a whole tangle of chargers, only two of which he actually needs. He can call me with updates, and he does. He has ordered fish and chips for lunch, and solved three clues of yesterday's crossword. So it goes.

My friend John Brooker has put together a book of stories and other pieces written by his late father. His father (A. J. Brooker) wrote bits and pieces all his life and occasionally had something published - in Punch, for example. John inherited a big box of his writing and eventually, after (as he says in a final 'editor's note') reading the stories for 50 years, on and off, he thought it only fair to let other people have a look at them.

With the result that they are now available on Amazon, as a Kindle ebook and now also in paperback. Here's the Amazon solicitation:

"You're cheating", observed Savage Roche, pinning dealer's hand to the table with a fork. "If he's got less than five aces I'll apologise", he added.

Will Fred Montague default on his bets and face social ruin, or will Savage Roche break his neck?

As the editor explains in his Foreword, the title is no more than the truth: these stories are period pieces. A small number were set in the present day, though even the present day of writing has slipped into the past. "The present day narration may be in the 1950s or 1970s, but the author is always happiest in the mid-eighteenth century."

I'm not an expert on the eighteenth century, and I'm not going to comment on the authenticity of these tales. But I found them witty, cynical, at times macabre, and very more-ish. If that's the kind of thing you like, then you might like them too.

ETA: There's a 'read a sample' button on the Amazon page, which offers several complete stories ...

- and still saving lives at sea. Happy birthday to the RNLI, 200 years old today!

I wouldn't normally think of a road tunnel as a must-see attraction. At best it's something that makes the journey easier - and if I'm on holiday, I'm more likely to complain that it also makes the journey less interesting. But I might make an exception in this case.

Bonus link: more about the art works, from the tunnel's website.

I've been thinking about plans for a spring trip to Galloway, and about things I wanted to post about our visit there last summer. But this is not that post, because I was distracted, while sorting through some photos, by this glimpse of the house we rented in Pittenweem earlier that summer:



You could call it "Self-portrait with bears," and certainly it was the bears that caught my eye to begih with. You find all sorts of things in holiday cottages, and a soft toy or two isn't really surprising, but this abundance - bears and oels and hedgehogs, oh, my! - was exceptional. Then I noticed that one of the bears (the one waering purple satin) had fangs ...

But the real joy is the books. Not the Merriam-Webster, though you never know when you might need a thesaurus. I can't remember what the Alan Garner was, but the top two books in that pile are Joan Aiken's Night Birds on Nantucket and Diana Wynne Jones' Wilkins' Tooth. That's a well-furnished room.

Hello to new things, goodbye to old things, what could be more appropriate for a January post?

I am writing this on my shiny brand new laptop. My little notebook has finally died. This wasn't unexpected, and I would have replaced it long since if I could simply have bought another the same, but they just don't make them any more: if I wanted something as small, it would have to be a tablet; if I wanted a keyboard (and I do) it would have to be larger. So although my notebook was just not holding a charge, and occasionally took 20 minutes plugged into the mains before it would even switch on, I put off replacing it. Eventually, last week, it gave up the ghost altogether, in the middle of streaming a Martin Simpson concert (fortunately, a YouTube link was provided after the gig, so we watched the second half the following evening). durham_rambler researched the options, and a replacement was delivered to our door within days. Now I have to get used to its foibles - and it has to get used to mine!

A sad goodbye to our lovely greengrocers, who have struggled on through lockdown and through all the disruption of the very much extended building work on the new bus station, directly across the road from them, but have now decided to close: family circumstances played a large part in this. They will not be so easily replaced.

An entirely new toy - well, new to me, because it was passed on by J - is a Kindle Fire which enables me to listen to podcasts. We had talked about this during her very snowy visit to Durham: I said this might yet be the thing which would persuade me to get a smart phone, and she not only recommended this technical alternative, but handed on one of her cast-offs. My gratitude grows greater each time I discover another thing I can listen to: time to write and tell her so...

We will not be eating haggis tonight, Burns Night though it is. It's not for want of trying. Ocado had no haggis when I placed my last order; or rather, they offered only vegetarian haggis, and at the time I thought I could do better.

Yesterday morning we went into Durham. I had some errands to do at the market, and I thought that buying a haggis would be one of them. The cheese stall (in former times my usual supplier, but now under different management) could not help, and the butcher's stall has vanished completely. Luckily the watch stall was able to refit the pin that secures my watch strap, so the trip wasn't wasted. But neither the supermarket nor the fancy new deli could help me. So there will be smoked mackerel kedgeree for dinner, and very nice too.

And here's a picture from last summer's holiday in Galloway, from Annan's old harbour area:

I may be the last person left still doing Wordle.

Two days ago, I solved it at the second try. This ought to be something to be pleased about, oughtn't it? I entered my usual start word (yes, I have a usual start word) and got four green letters - right letters in right places, only the first letter was wrong. It was easy to see what the initial letter had to be. Triumph!

Yes, but...

In theory, there's no reason not to carry on with the same start word: it's a good combination of common vowels and consonants, it works well for me. I shouldn't feel that it has been used up, that lightning won't strike twice in the same place. But I do.

So I'm using something else, for the time being, and feeling cheated.