Tag Archives: convalescence

My Winter Sports Career

Yesterday I briefly allowed myself to daydream an entire new life for myself as a Winter Olympian. I quite like Curling, I can use a brush and, as a married man, am accustomed to taking orders from a woman. The Mixed Doubles would be a good fit. Unfortunately, after looking at the state of the man in our mixed doubles team after all his brushing, I was unable to see myself surviving that much effort. It’s clearly an awful lot harder than it looks.

Then I watched the ski and snowboard events. I’m not even sure what the actually call them, but they are like going down a ski jump and doing skateboard tricks so high up they use a drone the film them. I initially thought the black marks on the screen were litter blowing across the slope when they started off, but it turned out to be the shadows of the drones. It’s all very strange.

SO that left Luge. I mean, you do it whilst lying down and the slope does the rest. How difficult can that be? The worst bit would surely be wearing those stripy skin-tight suits, wouldn’t it. Well it seems there’s a bit more to it than that. The 95mpg speeds are a bit off-putting and the inability to see the bends. It seems you have to memorise them. And be consistent. So quick, and consistent, with the ability to see thorough soles of your feet. Possibly not for me either.

So I sat at home, watched TV, made a few notes and felt much refreshed by the end of the day. I was even able to read some blogs, answer comments, write some poems and do emails. Not the most active of days, but a definite step back on the way to health.

 

A Day With Few High Points

I’ve just spent several minutes trying to remove an unwanted comma from a piece of work. It’s frustrating when you can’t get a computer to do what you want it to do.

It was even worse when I realised the “comma” was a mark on the screen. Laptop screens seem to attract more detritus than the screens on ordinary computers.

That’s been one of the highlights of the day.

The second was my blood test. The blood was not flowing well today and it felt like they were having to dig it out. When they removed the needle it suddenly decided to flow. Fortunately it hit the chair arm rather than me. Having changed specially for the visit I was glad that it didn’t go on my clothes.

It seems I passed the blood sugar test two weeks ago. Unfortunately I had a phone call from the anticoagulant service this afternoon to tell me that things had not gone so well. I need to go down for testing again next week: they do that when things don’t go well.

The final high point was sitting in a chair making demands for constant hydration (tea). Number One Son is back from Portugal and has been working well with the kettle. He even put a couple of sausages and some beans together for a light lunch.

I had to pay for this attention by listening to his views on nutrition and where my diet is going wrong. As his first degree is in Sports Science, including nutrition, he has the moral high ground.

Apart from that, I just sat here gently recovering and shouting at the television.