Bluehook's Diary

I started doing this diary in June. If you haven't been following have a look at the Cast of Characters which gives a quick low down on the essential day to day characters who are mentioned here...it will make more sense if you do.

I was in the restaurant for breakfast by 8.00 am. How I ever managed to do that I'll never know. I wasn't sure how the hotel breakfast would be but I found orange juice and some soaked fruit and museli and asked for a bowl of plain yoghurt and got it and so that was ok. I could also have had a full cooked breakfast with EVERYTHING, platefulls of cold meat, pastries and all sorts of stuff but it really wasn't appealing. After breakfast I went with Yoric (dunno about that spelling) who was going to be 'modelling' the computerised leg and John, one of the Otto Bock technicians to meet the people who were putting on the 'fashion show'. This involved lots of hanging around, mainly just till we were set a time to come back and rehearse it all.

I swapped my grypher for the sensor hand so that I could wear it and see what it felt like for the day and then I had some free time to see what Harrogate was all about and it seems to be mainly about fairly posh shops and is all quite Victorian, but nice enough and I got a few books and cds and other things I didn't really need and had some lunch. Back at the conference centre for the rehearsal which didn't really take place when it was meant to and seemed very cursory to me when it did. It seemed to be some sort of routine involving (able-bodied) dancers with a quick appearance by the amputees at the end. By the time this was all worked out and we had later returned for a final run through on the stage the exhibition was ready to open. That meant just hanging about on the Otto Bock stand and demonstrating the sensor hand when asked to do so until it was time for the show. When I got backstage I realised what was going on, that the dancers were actually modelling orthotic equipment, knee braces, hip braces, wrist splints, girdles, all sorts of complicated bits of equipment and each of the ten scenes in the show involved them changing the gear. Some of the scenes involved prosthetics as well but these four dancers were doing most of the modelling. There was also a guy with three different legs who did a fast changeover number and a couple of other guys with fancy legs and one other guy wearing a below elbow cosmetic silicone arm, with real hair and hand painted nails and veins and things. Very spooky thing to look at. Yoric and I were on last so we sat and smoked and watched the spectacle of these four fit, healthy young women periodically appearing with their knee braces and back braces and what have you and ripping them off as they tore into the room and two or three fitters surrounding them to put on the relevant orthotic product for the next scene, it all seemed very odd, but that's business. We had a couple of kids in our scene as well who messed things up a bit by telling Yoric he was doing something wrong when he wasn't and confusing the issue somewhat but I don't think anything was noticable from the front. It was good to get it over with, although we have to do it all again on Saturday.

We were meant to be eating out again at about 9.00 pm but when it was put back to 10.00 pm after the exhibition closed I really didn't want to wait that long and I was having a big headache by then. Instead I begged some paracetemol (wouldn't normally take things like that but it was bad, related to the stiff neck I think) from reception and went back to my room and order a whole load of salad and some orange juice from room service and put the tv on again.


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