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.

Everything seemed colder and crisper outside this morning when I went up to the field with the hay. Maybe this was partly because I went up earlier than normal but I did think there was something different in the air. Puddles were iced over but by the time I left for Swansea they were melting in the bright sun. The sun was nice but I would have appreciated it more if it hadn't been right in my eyes all the way there.

When I got to the artificial limb centre I was all excited because instead of just making a check socket they had gone ahead and made a real one which, all going well could be fitted today. I should have know better. It was very hard to get on, I had to use talcum powder, a lot of talcum powder but it did go on so they went ahead and fitted it into the outer socket while I went off for an hour. Thinking I was just coming for a quick fitting I hadn't brought a book and I was also hungry so I ended up in the hospital canteen eating chips and peas then chocolate sponge and custard. That didn't take anywhere near an hour so I wandered for a while and then sat and waited some more. The completed arm arrived but, again, it also seemed too short which was the same problem the other one had and the reason, I felt, that it was pulling off over my elbow when I straightened my arm. I then had to make a choice, 1: Have the old socket put back in. 2: Take it like it is. 3: Let the technician attempt a bodge job which he wasn't sure would work. Either way I would get another cast made and come back a week later. I chose the risky bodge job since neither the old or the new was anywhere near satisfactory. That, however, meant another hour to wait. I wasted another half hour going back to the canteen, which was about as far away from the limb centre as it was possible to get, buying a coffee and bringing it back to the smoker's bench outside the centre to sit and have a coffee and a fag together. Then a bit more time passed by in getting the new cast done and then a bit more of a wait. Eventually I got to go home with the bodged socket. It is remarkably tight, I only had it on for a few hours after I got home and when I took it off to have a bath there was quite a rash there already. I just hope I can get through a whole week with it. I also hope that this next socket is right, I'd like this to be over and done with.

I did mean to bring my camera with me today because I keep seeing these amazing views when I come home from there in the afternoon on the Carmarthen avoiding route. I forgot it but it was so much later than usual when I left Swansea that I though I'd miss all that late afternoon stuff anyway. I did in a way, but on the last leg of the journey, on the route which we call "over the top" I saw the practically full moon rising over the mountains, hanging a few inches up in the sky surrounded by pink and blue pastel shades of sky. Now that would have made a good photo and even if I do remember it next week, the moon won't be full nor will it be rising at the same time. Anyway, there is a part of me that believes that if I had taken the camera I wouldn't have seen that anyway.

Fortunately, when I'd realised that the afternoon was going on longer than planned I'd phoned home and asked Serena to check on my fire so when I got home it was warm because by then it was really quite damn cold outside. Clare was there when I got back, walking around in just a shirt probably, but then she is peculiarly hardy. This living with central heating has me spoiled already, I've only had it on for a month and already I feel cold everywhere else I go. Today it took quite a while before even that made the difference, I'm sure the temperature has dropped several degrees. That's about all for today, you know, usual evening stuff, dinner, bath, bedtime.


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