heaven, I'm in heaven...

Guess what I remembered! Isn't this beautiful? Joy: I shall live on meringues. At present I have none that look quite like this but once the baroque energy improves they will be easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy to make.

Lunch today (eaten very late because of clocks going forward etc): A soup of homemade chicken stock, skimmed of all fat, with celery, carrot, peas and fresh tagliatelle. Bay leaf, herbs.

While I was out earlier - my third ever-so-exciting shamble down Church St (which did leave me totally done in, but one must do something, and I'm now lying down again) - I ran into the daughter of Valerie, the so-amusing elderly lady who occupied the bed across from me in the hospital! We had a lovely chat, and her poor mother is still in there. The ghastliness. But she is improving and I sent all my best wishes, etc, and it was all very jolly and sweet. If only my own energy were better I would go take Valerie a nice cup of tea and some books.

The rest of it is all passing me by a bit. I'm vaguely worrying because I'm not writing anything at all, and I have people waiting (patiently, and not nail-bitingly) (though I have bitten some nails) for things, & I feel I should be "doing something". But my brain is running in little runnels, not even proper shallow channels. It would be silly. But maybe I should try. Poetry.

I had some ideas for posts here - posts revolving around "ideas" - but no. Can't sustain one. I mean I possibly could but it might hurt.

And the dreams! Strange, unsettling, peculiar. Scary to be sick. (I know other people are, and sicker.) I don't feel safe till the gall bladder is out - it could happen again: I could have had septicaemia or liver failure. It's scary that I was all alone here and could so easily have not gone to the hospital when I did. Just soldiered on. Well, but if it did happen again I'd be in there like a flash. The main danger now is of becoming a hypochondriac, possibly.

Anyway, at the moment I'm propped on a huge velvet cushion on the sofa, with the Father Ted eiderdown, a blue glass bowl of blueberries, and my own pile of books: Graham Greene, Colin Wilson, Proust (new trans.), some poetry, and a bagatelle about Benjamin Haydon's "immortal dinner" in 1817. That in itself is kind of like a meringue.