Rambling

Thank you all so much for your get well wishes. It is so very cheering when one feels so comprehensively rotten. I am now tucked up in bed at my friend's home in Highgate. Once it was a village with a tollgate into London, perched on a hill overlooking the city, and today Highgate still feels separate from the rest of London with its Georgian and Victorian houses. I'm in the attic extension of one of those houses, in a bedroom with huge roof windows open to the sky, so that I can see the stars.

MY parents live in the depths of the country, where nursing care would be almost impossible to arrange, so I am, guiltily, imposing myself upon the staggeringly generous C. It is lovely staying with a family though: C and I have been best friends since we were 16, and I can hear Ollie, my three year old chocolate-smeared godson having his bath downstairs and his little sister Luella squeaking about. Although I am in my own guest suite, it has an open staircase so they can't resist crawling up the stairs to investigate what Aunty XX is up to. (Sleeping, in the main.) Ollie tried to feed me chocolate today. Very self-sacrificial of him. And impressed that he already equates chocolate with medicine.

Anyway, the prognosis from the surgeon is very good, although I can't sit, walk very far, wear trousers, or heels (the horror!) for maybe a fortnight. Luckily the fabulous District Nurse team will be visiting me in bed every day to look after me. The National Health Service is just beyond extraordinary. Coming from New York, I appreciate the NHS more & more each day. All this costs me not a penny. (Well, it does in taxes, but you know what I mean.)

Right. I have to do some sleeping. Lovely, lovely painkillers. Mmmmm.