A welcome call

On Tuesday I was surprised to get a phone call from the surgery. They’d received a letter from the MacMillan nurse, telling them what had been said at my meeting with her last week. She also recommended some medication to reduce the pain in my breast. This now was a doctor ringing to say she was happy to sign off a prescription for me to collect at the chemist that afternoon.

I hot paced to the chemist & sure enough there were some pills for me. It turns out they are a mild antidepressant that has a side effect of easing the pain of nerve injury. I’m to take them just before I go to bed to maximise their painkilling effect for a good night’s sleep & to enable me to be over the worst of the drowsiness they cause by daytime. As with so many antidepressants they have left a horrible taste in the mouth, as though the saliva in my mouth has had the liquid reduced, but at least the breast pain has virtually disappeared. Certainly it is within tolerable levels. Three cheers. The other side effects should ease after a few days. I hope so.

I’m still to see my GP in a week’s time to discuss any side effects & the effectiveness of the medication. I thought I would have to stick it out till then before I even had some pain relief so I’m not complaining.

Catching the Wind

At the weekend we decided to go out to the golf club for a change of scene. As we went along the prom we were reminded that it was the Catch the Wind Kite Festival weekend. We usually ignore the various festivals arranged in Morecambe. They are designed to draw in the tourists. This festival was certainly doing that. People were everywhere. Music & dancing were to be heard & seen on every section of the prom.

The reminder came as we saw the sky full of colour. These were not the traditional box kites or diamond-shaped kites. These came in all sorts of shape & colour.

The first that caught my eye was a frogman in full diving gear swimming through the blue skies. Then I saw Gromit piloting a plane with Wallace clinging on for dear life behind. Some made you smile. Others wowed you with their beauty. All were very individual.

It struck me afterwards that Morecambe was a good place to hold an annual kite festival. We rarely fail to have wind coming off the Bay, some days stronger than others, but always blowing. It is the still day that is the rarity here. And a kite festival certainly needs a strong probability of wind.

Permission to dream again

The celebrations continue as the news spreads of my good(?) health. You can almost hear a palpable sigh of relief among our friends. I suspect we’re not the only ones who have felt the strain of the recent months.

We meanwhile are turning our thoughts to holidays. We’re contemplating a cruise from Monaco to Barcelona. As we dream we put on a CD of Georges Brassens. He comes from Sète, one of the ports of call of this cruise. Sète even has a museum to Georges Brassens. (I always think of him as the French Jake Thackeray.)

It’s a cruise I’ve had my eye on for a while, mainly because most of the ports are places we’ve fancied visiting at some time, with a little bit of Majorca & Spain, which we’re not so immediately attracted to. Barcelona looks fascinating but elsewhere in Spain we’re not so sure about. Maybe it’s just the image of Little of England in the sun & the Costas full of lager louts which puts us off. The reality may appeal much more.

The last time we went on a sea-going cruise we didn’t greatly enjoy it. It had its highlights.

The Hubbard Glacier & multi-coloured icebergs

The Hubbard Glacier was fabulous. Our friends have enthused so much about cruising we thought we ought to consider another try. We definitely think if we do, we want to try a smaller ship (we felt crushed under the number of people on board the other trip) & in warm waters (the only other times we really enjoyed the cruise were on the balmy evenings as we left & returned to port at Vancouver, when the rest of the holidaymakers could be comfortably avoided). This cruise fulfils both conditions. We thought we might extend the holiday with a few days at each end to discover Monaco & Barcelona, neither of which we’ve ever visited.

It’s good just to be able to feel some excitement about the possibility of going away. We’ve not finally decided, & certainly not booked yet, though we have ascertained there are still some wheelchair accessible cabins available. With my health having been so uncertain for so long it’s been difficult to feel much excitement, or energy for that matter, about such frivolities as holidays. Now we feel we’ve been given the okay to get excited once more, to dream again & it’s wonderful.