Disgressed

So, success! 50,00 words duly delivered during November (in fact, a few more than that), and a relatively coherent narrative wrapped up.

It was, with hindsight, pretty stupid to make the attempt this year, but having a fairly well-detailed outline (actually I’m told it isn’t an outline, more like a synopsis) made it far easier. I rarely had to stare at a blank screen wondering what the hell was going to happen to my characters next.

I did, though face that strange reluctance to actually do the thing that comes over you at times. You’ve got an hour, you’re sitting in front of the computer, you know roughly what you need to say, you just somehow can’t bring yourself to start hitting the keys again. It’s quite strange, and something I hadn’t allowed for. Not fatigue, not boredom. It’s more like overcoming your instinctive reluctance to jump off a cliff, though obviously not as scary. It’s as if there’s some deep biological imperative you have to overcome consciously.

I took Katharine in to the Royal Marsden yesterday for re-excision of the margins of the original lump. This is a much smaller matter than the original op, a preliminary to radiotherapy which should more or less complete the major part of the treatment before the end of the year.

The surgery went well, and Katharine should be back home today. However, it can’t really be said that the visit went well.

We had been asked to turn up at 7.30 am, but at reception we were greeted with the faint air of surprise that never bodes well. After a bit of a wait we were told that, although Katharine had been booked in for several weeks, they hadn’t in fact got a bed on the private ward. Nobody quite knew what was going to happen. Nobody, of course, had foreseen the problem and attempted to arrange a bed anywhere else in advance, or warn us, or reschedule the operation. Perhaps we’d like to wait.

A nurse came out to explain the position to us. Her main concern seemed to be the most direct route back to her own psychological comfort zone, where she was the one graciously dispensing slightly patronising help, and avoiding anything negative like shame, embarassment, apology, or responsibility.

“Did they offer you a choice of hospitals when you booked in here?” she asked cheerfully (because you really picked the wrong one that time, didn’t you?)

“There might be a bed free later,” she said, with a broad smile, “But I can’t promise anything. I might get your hopes up, and that would be wrong.”

She paused for us to admire the integrity and consideration she was showing by promising us absolutely nothing whatever.

“Anyway, you need this operation, don’t you?” she observed brightly, “You really need that doing. ”

I had assumed that it was only patients that get this kind of thing, but a few minutes later Mr Querci the consultant surgeon turned up himself.

“No bed?” he asked. He opened his hands wide in a gesture of despair.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “Well, I’m here. I’m ready to start.”

Eventually, Katharine was sent down to the day surgery unit for preparation. This temporary unit is reached via a corridor constructed out of scaffolding poles, hardboard and corrugated sheeting, effectively open to the November air. They had put cheery pictures on the hardboard. In a similar spirit, the cramped unit had been fitted with loudspeakers for every bed through which Radio Two was blaring, making it difficult to hear the nurses asking for name, address, and all the other identical details which we gave at least six times that day.

“Is it possible to turn that off?” I asked.

“You want it? – off?”

“Yes.”

She disappeared for a minute, and it was turned off.

After the operation, Katharine spent a couple of hours in Recovery; and then they managed to find a bed (for what it’s worth my impression was that there was no actual shortage of beds overall, and that the difficulty was primarily administrative, but I could be wrong).

We were told that many of the problems are directly or indirectly attributable to the fire which damaged the other branch of the Royal Marsden a little while ago.? Unfortunately, this is the second time we have arrived to find that the promised, planned, solemnly booked and recorded bed was not available. In these circumstances, what does ‘booking’ actually achieve? Pot luck couldn’t be any worse.

On Sunday we went to the exhibition of Byzantine art and artefacts at the Royal Academy. I think I basically dragged the rest of the family there out of a conviction that it was important and that we hadn’t done any culture recently. Katharine wasn’t keen, Elizabeth needed to do her homework, Sarah hadn’t a clue who these people were.

Inevitably then, it proved a bit disappointing. I know it probably shows that I have defective taste, but really most Byzantine stuff is dull. Earlier Roman art, what we have of it, is lively, realistic, and treats a diversity of interesting subjects. Think of Roman portrait busts, with their vivid portrayal of real and recognisable personalities, or bustling and clever mosaics like the famous ‘unswept floor’. Later, we get the Renaissance, with all that that entails. In between, Byzantine art seems stiff, invariably devotional, incompetent in realism, hidebound by convention, and hobbled by hyperbole. How many pictures of a naively executed woman on a gold background holding a baby that looks like an ugly deformed little man in a really bad temper, does the world really need?

That’s a bit unfair, of course; there was some good stuff too; some micromosaics, for example; and face to face with one of the really large icons of the Archangel Gabriel (even while my Protestant instincts were insisting that angels were not to be worshipped) I did get a vivid sense of an alien consciousness beaming out through those large, strange eyes.

I’m biased against the later Byzantines by their reaction to the First Crusade. This bunch of battle-ready Normans, French, Anglo-Saxon and other knights turns up on their doorstep asking to help out, and their reaction is to deplore the way they smell and then fail to turn up for any of the fighting. Julius Caesar would not have been so ungrateful; as we know, from his own individual perspective he once remarked that his troops fought just as well whatever they smelt like.? To be fair, Count Belisarius would not have scorned the Crusaders, either; on the contrary he would have thought Christmas had come early if he had been given such a useful band of allies.

Perhaps we should have held on for the Babylon exhibition.

In the old days, I used to have long conversations with Elizabeth while we were undertaking the long daily journey to nursery, where we left Sarah, and then on to school. There was time to test her spelling, tell each other a story, and still have plenty of time for homespun philosophy, current affairs, and stuff. Those days are long gone, but recently the short walk to the bus-stop has sort of provided an abbreviated elder version.

“Ah, English today,” she remarked recently, “Oh well.”

“Don’t you like English?”

“S’alright, but there are none of my real friends to talk to.”

“I see.”

“The girls in front, they’re OK. I would talk to them. But they won’t turn round.”

“Annoying.”

“Yeah. And I don’t want to turn round to talk to the people behind, because everyone can see you. It’s like talking to an audience. And there’s this boy in the row behind. Every time I turn round to talk to somebody he pulls this face. I know it’s just because he’s stupid, but it sort of puts you off.”

“Hmm.”

I suppose if I were a responsible parent I would say ‘You mustn’t talk to people during the lessons, Elizabeth’. But then I’d never get to hear about the stupid boy with the face, or any of the other little items of interest.

My attempt on Nanowrimo ‘08 has begun with a first chapter weighing in at a comfortable 2,557 words. If I can keep this up, I’ll be finished by 20 November…