09:00 Another big day for me – not only do I have to leave the
house, but I have to visit my doctor’s surgery to see the nurse, and to have my
annual blood test and blood pressure check – yikes!
It’s taken me by surprise that I am so nervous – I feel like I am almost
shaking like a leaf, but Lois says I’m not actually showing any signs of
anxiety, as far as she can see, which is a comfort. While I am waiting to go
out, I do a crossword to calm myself down.
I am afraid that when I see the nurse my blood pressure will shoot
up off the scale, however. This happened 10 years ago – I visited the doctor
for the first time in 15 years, and was so nervous that my blood pressure
reading shot up, and I was on tablets for 6 years, and had to pay extra on my
travel insurance for numerous trips – damn!
10:50 I go in for my appointment. Patients have to check in at a
special window outside the main surgery and then go back to the car to wait.
When they are ready for me, the nurse comes out to the car to collect me. They told
me on the phone last week that they would take my temperature at the car, but
in fact they don’t do that – they just ask me if I have experienced any
symptoms: I haven’t of course – Lois and I have almost exclusively only had
each other for company for about 4 months. And we disinfect everything that
comes into the house from outside. We’re hyper safe, we feel (famous last words) !!!
our doctors surgery
The blood pressure reading turns out to be not too bad, and I also
give the nurse my own readings that I have taken over the last 6 weeks. She
says she will scan them in and attach them to my file.
What a baby I am, when it comes to doctors and nurses !!!! They
will phone me in a week’s time and tell me my blood test results.
19:30 Lois goes in the dining room to take part in her sect’s
monthly business meeting online. I settle down in the living room and listen to
the radio.
It’s a podcast of Melvyn Bragg’s “In Our Time” series, this one
being about Thomas Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur”, which I and the other members
of Lynda’s U3A Middle English group will be discussing on zoom tomorrow.
An interesting discussion – Malory was a bit of a “thug” according
to Melvyn’s contributors, but obviously a thug who could write a good book. He
wrote the book in prison, an environment he was used to, although for the stretch
when he was writing the book, it was probably just a “house arrest” in some lovely
mansion, so he had the use of the owner’s library, which was nice.
Malory was jailed for various offences over the course of his
lifetime, including a repeated rape of the same woman, although Melvyn’s
experts think this was probably a case of an adulterous affair, which was
whitewashed as a “rape”, to save some blushes.
Malory’s achievement was to blend the English traditions about
Arthur, which concentrated on the heroic deeds, and the French traditions,
which concentrated on the romance and adultery side of the picture, especially
Queen Guinevere’s famous affair with Sir Lancelot.
Sir Lancelot with Queen Guinevere
21:30 Lois’s business meeting finishes and we settle down on the
couch to watch some of the first 2 episodes of “Harlots” on BBC2.
Having seen these 2 episodes we decide it isn’t for us – oh dear!
Everything is very rushed and is made up of a lot of mini-scenes, 30 seconds of
dialogue in some elegant salon, 5 seconds of a sex scene in one of the rooms, then
5 seconds of a couple at it in another room, with lots of bare bottoms, 30 seconds of
people running about in the street or in and out of doorways etc. And there’s a
huge cast of characters, most of whom Lois and I don’t have a clue about who
they are.
Nobody is very much of a nice person, to put it mildly. Everybody’s
out for what they can get – the harlots themselves, the brothel owners and the
aristocratic customers. It’s just “gimme, gimme, gimme” all the time – what madness!
We prefer it when the action is more sedate, so that you can really
see and hear who’s doing what and who’s saying what, and can get to know the
characters – oh dear, we’re getting old, no doubt about that!
22:00 We go to bed – zzzzzzzz!!!!
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