Rebranchée...

Thanks all for the kind wishes. Fortunately mobiles take some of the worry from such occurrences. I contacted Orange (the organism formerly known as France Telecom) yesterday, and waited out the the prerecorded message about how all our teams are working on the problem, and grumbled at the operator when she told me it might not be repaired until Friday.

As we drove down the hill on the way to the hospital, I was led to speculate as to why they might be digging up the road, and Tom said 'Well you can bet your life it's nothing to do with fixing our bloody phone.' However, I noticed today that they did indeed have vans with 'Orange' on them, so perhaps our assumption that it was storm damage was incorrect. Funny really, one assumes that it's all going on in some non-concrete way up in the ether, it was something of an eye-opener to see a group of men in fluo jackets down in a muddy hole looking over a bunch of filthy-looking cables on a dank day in November. I was moved to think 'What a pig of a job!' and to regret my grumpiness and sense of entitlement about their services.

Anyway, installing Tom à l'hôpital last night all went quite smoothly, he was given food and iodine to shower in and various other preparatory instructions, and I sorted out his bedside phone. He was initially told he would be taken for the op at 8 am, but then the seven-foot tall, winkle-picker wearing surgeon with the nice English stopped by and said, no he'd be the second one and it would be later.

He called me a bit before 8 this morning,(or rather he tried to; I'd left the mobile in my dressing gown pocket and gone back to sleep, so had to use precious and short mobile credit ringing him back, got the number wrong and woke up some other poor sick patient, got through eventually), said they'd given him something to knock him out so he was talking while he still could. He'll have four, or five, we're not sure, keyholes in him at the end of the day, and about 25 cm less of his insides. He's been a bit twitchy the last few days, but calmed and cheered considerably at the last minute.

I got about half-way there at midday today, bought phone cards to recharge the mobiles and some other necessities, called the nurses who said he still hadn't gone down to the theatre and there was no point in my going in before 6 pm. I'll make it 5, in the hopes. I came home thinking I could be more usefully occupied here, picking up some wood from the sawmill on the way, and, though they were still working over lunchtime on the cables, on my return found we were back in the land of the telephonically living. I unloaded the wood, got a hot-coal-heaping call from a friend I thought we'd pretty much fallen out with, wishing us well, and sat down to this.

Molly and I are leading something of an itinerant existence, packing ourselves, and our supplies for the day, food, drink, money, books, notepads and pens, (not the camera at the moment, I'm not quite in the mood for it...) mobile, leads, towels and blankets, changes of footwear - I leave it to you to work out which are for Molly and which for me! - into the car in the morning, not quite sure where we might be and when. I don't actually mind, even rather enjoy it in an odd sort of way, so long as all goes well, and there's no reason to suppose it won't. The hospital staff work so hard and so conscientiously, patience is the least we can manage. Mol is calm and quiet, by her standards anyway, but is acting a little like my daemon.

Nablopomo, posting every day, has gone out of the window with the outage, but not to worry, my heart wasn't fully in it this year anyway. I'm scribbling a bit, and will just post as little or often as I feel like now.

Apologies that this has been a rather flat and linear (is that a tautology?) account of proceedings, it's an update rather than an attempt at anything creative. To some extent I find blogging's useful like that for one's own records, as I don't keep any very careful diary entries anywhere else, or even remember always to put things on the calendar.

~~~

A nice thing came this morning. I don't know if you recall in the post about chestnuts last month, I mentioned Mireille Johnston's TV series, and how I'd like to see it again, and how there was an excellent obituary to her on John Whiting's website? I e-mailed him my appreciation, and asked if he knew if the series was available on DVD. He replied that it wasn't, but he made me a copy of his own private recording of it and posted it to me, refusing to take anything for his trouble! The generosity of people in this medium never ceases to surprise and delight. Do visit his website if you've time, particularly if you're interested in food, (especially cassoulet!) and France, it's wonderfully fun and interesting and full of stuff.

I shall be about my business now, pack my bag for work tomorrow and perhaps lay a fire to cheer the spirits for when I come in tonight. Please bear with my neglect of others' blogs, I'll perhaps get around some at the weekend. And thanks again for support and concern. I have missed this, even for such a short time and with other distractions, I've become rather used to having it...