The Hums of Ceres Wunderkind

03:20 pm - Health Update

There's nothing so tedious as hearing old people whingeing about their ailments, so feel free to skip this.

Basically I'm better but not yet completely well. The wound is still oozing a little and it still niffs a bit although it does seem to be healing slowly . I'm still tiring very easily too.

But - FW and I managed a trip to Caversham Heights on Thursday to present Non Combatants and Others and by taking the small PA system instead of the big one I was able to rig and take down the show single-handed. Because Minor wouldn't help, now would he?

Oh well - another weeks of daily appointments at the surgery for changes of dressings coming up.

11:10 am - Guardians of Glory, Part Fourteen

It's been a while, I know.

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06:28 pm - Idiot Killed The Video Card

Silly sod me. Changing the heatsink paste was only going to work if the heatsink was in contact with the graphics chip. It wasn't. Result - one fried card (but why didn't it simply shut down, like Intel CPUs do?)

Now running (limping) on a 10 year old Voodoo 3 which, fortunately, is a reasonably adequate 2D card.

10:01 am - So Why Didn't They?

Torchwoody Spoilery?

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05:40 pm - Tutting and head shaking

Just back from seeing the practise nurse who isn't too happy with the state of my post-op wound. She's put a drain in and made daily appointments for the rest of the week.

This shouldn't be happening, should it? The double-dose antibiotics should have killed the infection by now...

06:03 pm - Never a War - a new Tale of Glory

10:23 am - Not Nurse Ratchett

Down to the GP's surgery this morning to see the practice nurse, who turned out to be quite a jolly sort. She squeezed and pushed and got some more muck out and gave me some dressings, swabs and saline to see me over the weekend.

I'll see her again Monday teatime.

08:28 am - Yuk!

I said the other day that my post-op recovery was going rather slowly. Last night I found out why.

The main wound - just above my tummy button - had become infected and the abscess burst just as I was throwing away some kitchen waste. "That bin smells bad," I thought, but it wasn't the bin, it was me. Pus was literally spurting out of the wound. The immediate effect, apart from smelling like something dead, was that the pain lessened quite significantly, which was very welcome.

Back over to the Royal Berks, then, to see the out of hours GP. He took one look at the mess - I was on my second shirt of the evening and using tissues to staunch the flow - and prescribed a double dose of Flucloxacillin and regular hot compresses.

I'm quite relieved, actually. Now I know there's nothing more serious in there, like a torn muscle, I'm less concerned. Antibiotics will deal with the infection and, so long as nothing else happens, my recovery should be back on course.

03:24 pm - Out and about

I finally got out of the house today. Once in the morning, taking FW to Hurst for her singing lesson and again this afternoon for a little light shopping.

Shagged out now, so I'm lying supine on the bed upstairs. I'm also working on another short story about life on Glory, provisionally entitled Never a War. It's another Johanna Chen tale. Let's hope she's learned her lesson!

10:49 pm - Not According To Plan

Not my plan, anyway. Recovery post lap choly is meant to be reasonably quick but here I am, a week later, still running on painkillers and finding it hard to get comfortable. Fortunately I can sleep if I lie flat on my back. The trouble is that things are only improving very slowly. Right now I'd settle for the return of my gallbladder, thanks all the same...

10:30 am - Another good show

We gave Our Grandmothers' War to the Bucks FHS in Bourne End last night. The hall was unatmospheric to say the least (they often are) but the audience was attentive and very appreciative, which is always nice.

As a bonus, they served Rebellion in the bar. The Rebellion brewery is only five miles down the road in Marlow Bottom - http://www.rebellionbeer.co.uk. It was established quite recently - 1993 - and they really knows what they're doing. Their IPA was a pleasure to drink.

Next stop Basingstoke, for a Non-Combatants and Others.

10:40 am - Guardians of Glory, Part Thirteen

11:36 am - "Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful."

Fifty-four years. It's been that long since Waiting for Godot first opened in London. About time FW and I saw it, then :)

It just so happens that we have bound sets of Plays and Players magazine for the nineteen-fifties here at Schloß Wunderkind so I've been able to go back and check the original reviews. And it's kind of weird. Godot gets very little editorial coverage - twenty lines of dismissive copy under the New Plays header and most of what you find is a half-page ad inserted by the management of the Criterion Theatre full of counteracting positive reviews. Then, once the run is over, there's a full page article by Peter Bull, who played Pozzo, which is jocular about the difficulties of being in a controversial production. That's all I can find for late '55-early '56. So, in one sector of the theatrical press at least, Godot wasn't much of a revolution. They probably expected it to be no more than a seven-day wonder.

Except, of course, that it's lasted rather longer than that. Now it's been absorbed into the scenery, in the same way that, for example, the music of Igor Stravinsky has been. Once there were riots, now school orchestras play Le Sacre de Printemps and amateur companies go to Samuel French for their copies of Godot. It's still not easy to do well with either, but it is at least possible.

Something else has changed. When you look at nineteen-fifties responses to the play, they've centred on meaning and significance and symbolism. In the programme notes for the present production, the talk is all about relationships. How very twenty-first century! It's as if we've finally come to realise that we can do nothing to change anything on the wider scale, that questions of why and how are all so adolescent and that all that really matters is how we get on with each other as individuals. So Didi and Gogo are an old married couple, according to Patrick Stewart, and something has gone "terribly wrong" between Lucky and Pozzo.

Is this maturity, or cynicism? Have we finally grown up, or has all drama been reduced to soap opera? I'm not sure.

Anyway, on to the present production which we saw at the gorgeously gold-leafed Royal Haymarket Theatre just down the road from Piccadilly Circus. It was sold out, of course, to a very enthusiastic audience of Woopsies. We weren't the youngest people there, but we weren't far off it.

It was clear from the outset that the approach to the play was going to be essentially light-hearted. Almost every line was greeted with laughter, especially those from Ian McKellen's wonderfully put-upon Gogo, who stood or sat all shrunk in on himself, being classically passive-aggressive while Patrick Stewart's Didi strode around the stage trying, and not really succeeding, to dominate him.

Simon Callow's Pozzo was very loud and red-faced and Ronald Pickup’s Lucky was very downcast – they came over as a vastly exaggerated version of Vladimir and Estragon.

Technically, everything is fine. The set is a post-industrial wasteland, or maybe a bombsite, so old that the Tree has grown through the paving stones that surround it. Performances are confident. The programme is excellent, especially when compared with the usual West End tat.

And so – who’s epic and who fails? Well, nobody fails. They’re all far too good for that to happen. But to my mind, McKellen and Pickup inhabit their roles in a way that Stewart and Callow don’t quite manage. Ronald Pickup, especially, is completely absorbed in Lucky’s subjugation and McKellen, while still being himself, becomes his part in very much the same way that Alec Guinness used to. On the other hand, I could have wished for a little less Brian Blessed from Simon Callow and not quite so much dilithium from Patrick Stewart. It would be unfair to Stewart to leave it there, though – he achieves one of this production’s rare moments of stillness and contemplation near the end. For a moment it actually becomes quite thoughtful. A few more moments like that would have been good.

06:52 pm - Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy

I feel quite proud of myself for being able to type that. Anyway - I finally have a date for my gallstones operation. It's June 18th [this year :)]

And not a moment too soon, if you don't mind my saying it. Here it is (not for the squeamish)

05:44 pm - Guardians of Glory, Part Twelve

No, I haven't abandoned it!

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09:51 am - Oucho

Sunday night I had a particularly nasty gallstone attack. It started at 19:00 and when I crawled into bed at 04:30 the following morning it was still going on. I had practically nothing to eat yesterday and feel OK now, but rather sleep-deprived.

I'm quite looking forward to this being dealt with. Although being in hospital was better than I'd expected I don't want to have another stay just yet.

On the good news front, my ADSL connection is steadily rising in speed. It doubled overnight :)

08:10 pm

Still in the Royal Berks. To be honest I feel rather a fraud as everyone else here seems to be much sicker than me.

I'm treating this experience as a dress rehearsal for being old. Anyone of my age has watched his or her parents grow old. We know what happens - what Wilfred Owen, admittedly writing in another context - called the 'slow drawing down of blinds'. Boomers like me; we thought we'd stay young and healthy for ever...

And we thought we'd gently slow down and we'd never have to hurt. The truth turns out to be slightly different :)

09:02 pm - In the jug

Hi, and greetings from the Royal Berks Hospital, Loddon Ward, where I'm presently residing. It's down to a complication with my gallstones, which have become a lot more troublesome over the past few days. Turns out I now have pancreatitis. Fun, eh?

So I'm being kept in for a day or two (and being starved) to give the various digestive organs a rest. Fortunately there's internet here, else I'd be going round the bend already (and I've only been here a few hours).

DaveD; if you're reading this, happy birthday for tomorrow. There's a little something in the post :)

I'll have more to say later about the fuckwit GP I spoke to earlier today. For now: If a doctor doesn't listen, he's not worth talking to.

07:05 pm - It's obvious!

So why didn't I notice it before? The three main supernatural characters in the very enjoyable Being Human are all cast against type. Annie the ghost is fleshy and solid, Goerge the werewolf is pale and interesting and Mitchell the vampire is hairy and bearded. However, the others of their kind do conform - pale Gilbert the 80s ghost, George's werewolf friend and the other vampires of Bristol look the (traditional) part.

Isn't that clever! And which came first - the supernaturals' desire to become human or their adoption of unexpected appearances?

02:20 pm - The Guiding Star

Here's the story I promised you.

Welcome back to the Ringland of Leaven and a sequel to Pirates of the Archipelago / Tides of Glory.

Annie McLuskie's story continues...

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