Dead to the world

Spent all morning in the doctor’s surgery and all afternoon sleeping to recover so forgot to post Monday’s Blog. Monday is always a bad day for a visit to the doctor and the surgery was packed but Elizabeth won’t be thrown by this. She takes all the time it needs to see to each patient and she must be totally exhausted at the end of the day.

This has nothing to do with my visit but last Saturday I died. You might not find that very interesting but it is very interesting to me as it is always what I imagined death to be like. I was sitting here at the computer and I suddenly realised I had blacked out. I don’t know how long for before I came too in the blink of an eyelid; it could have just been a matter of seconds, could have been longer.

For a while now I’ve tended to doze and drop off and it is when I tend to topple over sideway on the chair that I wake up but this was entirely different.

There was no feeling of sleepiness, no drowsing, no dozing off and, in fact, I didn’t know it had actually happened until I found myself, still sitting upright, staring at the screen slightly bewildered until I realised what had happened – instantaneous black, nothingness, Did my heart for a time stop beating? I don’t know and there was no way of finding out. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. Anyway it was a unique experience.

The blood tests from Monday’s visit to Elizabeth indicate that I have to cut down drastically on the rat poison. Glad of that, I hate the stuff especial as it discolours my arms and hands in so ugly a fashion. The second test indicated anaemia which is probably the cause of (a) dozing off all the time and (b) breathlessness and (c) legs that grow steadily weaker, so Douglas reckons he is going to beef me up on broccoli (hate it) and ox liver (hate it) but I suppose I might as well submit or give way to a wheelchair (hate the very thought.)

The first couple of years I was in England I wrote my first play, “The River of Sand,” set in South Africa natch and a story around the Boer War. Apart from a play reading many years ago it has never been done but I suddenly, a few days ago, decided to look at it again and maybe do some work on it and I am so glad I did. I’m also glad that Chris read it, made some astute criticisms and I realised time- scale wise and character wise I was all over the place. Father at one point became grandfather, brother at one point became nephew etc.So that has now all been set to rights and Chris meanwhile has more ideas I’m waiting to hear about.

The situation in Greece gets worse and worse. The government, having raised the price of heating oil to such an extent that most ordinary people can no longer afford it is now banning wood burning stoves in cities because of smog. How are people expected to keep their houses warm and dry. Already the temperature has dropped and the rain set in.?