Springtime Strands: a new hospital, the beach and the park.
Springtime Strands: a new hospital, the beach and the park.
And so much to catch up on!
My dear friends and readers, please forgive the lack of updates. I can't tell you how much I enjoy writing for you and yet there are many hurdles to circumvent.
Now I am here, allow me to do a health report. It remains reasonably stable though there are new challenges and constant reminders that brain trauma sets it own time and schedule by which it will heal. While I've had no new brain bleeds, I still have epilepsy and there are further complications. I remain a conundrum and a contradiction. While one approach solves one issue, it makes another worse.
I'm now under the care of the National Neurology Hospital which is more or less in Bloomsbury.
Endless blue plaques remind me that Virginia Woolf and associates lived here and there, in buildings no longer standing, yet seeing them lifts my mood.
This hospital is deemed as one of the best in the world for brain trauma and from the moment I arrived at my first appointment it was plain I was in a different sphere of care. One that, much to my relief, saw my complexities and took them on with attention, compassion and professionalism.
The journeys to London are complicated because I need to take extra equipment wherever I go. As the weather improves I hope to take the train and I know in my heart (and in many poems) while I've left London, it will never fully leave me, and this is somehow helpful.
As you may or may not remember, I live 10 minutes from the seafront. I'm halfway down a hill that leads to it. From the small car park in front of my flat, I can see the line of the sea. I imagine there's some natural optical illusion that sets it high in my vision, touching on hyper real, like a CGI tsunami, a band of richest blue above the orange horizon.
Recently I went to a park with a friend. Much of Hastings appeared to follow my example, happy to stroll around in large family groups, delightful bouncing pooches and eager children.
Brain trauma Penny (does that sound a tad too similar to Typhoid Mary?!) does not cope well in noisy crowded environments. This meant things did not start well, along with the inevitable military manoeuvre of my wheelchair which requires precision and patience to circumvent those details above, and more importantly, to exercise my simple right to sit at a table and eat lunch the same as anyone else.
But the sun in the sky, oh what a glory. A moment to put aside the guilty anxiety that every action, every breath and, that even the beholding of such things, contributes to damaging nature, I immersed in the time to relish the simple pleasure of looking at primroses, the pale, scarcely yellow native version. Below an intensely blue sky, light blues of cloud and levels of birdsong that were almost mythological.
Times to enjoy and times to say to myself there's still so much to live for, to bathe in this glow of new spring.
I know I have always been a tease. Today I save till last the news that I finished my latest novel. A few words shy of 90,000! Naturally, I am incredibly proud of this achievement, particularly as most of the writing began in earnest three months after my serious illness. Now in the safe hands of my agent, the hard graft begins.
More news on this and other developments very soon.
Hoping the glow touches you all,
with much thanks,
Penny x
With thanks to my new paid subscribers. Times are tough on many fronts including significant changes to how the benefit system is working. Not something I welcome, but something I can't avoid. I'm not willing to put up a total pay wall, so if any more of you could consider signing up for the few pounds per month, it is very appreciated. And do consider buying the latest, most delicious version of Desires Reborn, which you can now order through my website.