Blog archive April 2005

<< March 2005 / May 2005 >>

---

25.04.05 / 01 / stitches out today

so almost back to normal. left hand still very bruised though, and easily hurt. can wear glasses again. back at work [though it took some psyching up not to take the rest of the day off after hospital this morning].

thanks to everyone for good wishes and sympathy. it's been interesting seeing how people react in the street with my face like that. they look at me funny. i suspect they think i've been in some bar fight. of course if i put my glasses on it looks like i was the weed who got picked on in the bar fight. without my glasses i look more like the instigator. especially if i put my hood up.

---

24.04.05 / 01 / much more badass

now that the bruising round my eyes has come up

ambulanceman checking my pulse:
[surprised] "do you keep really fit? cycle racing?"

---

22.04.05 / 02 / more norway photos

bergen, geirangerfjord - accessible from here

my scabs are itching which is a good sign but horrible because i can't touch them

---

22.04.05 / 01 / medicine photographs

since i can't wear my glasses i can't do much computer work. the one thing that doesn't involve me in too much coding is putting up some of my photographs that make me feel better to look at.

so the best from frauenalb are in big format at page 26 on the stack

and some of my norway collection are in the photos section. these are in the 'stack' format because they just have to be seen at large size. enjoy.

---

21.04.05 / 02 / accident picture

for the ghouls who frequent this blog ;)

see, i didn't think this looked quite badass enough to publicise. and it wasn't done in a badass way. ironically, a couple of days ago i was asking a guy in the office about his broken arm, and he did it stumbling over some small step. and i said, i broke my wrist as a kid jumping off something a foot high. it's the little things that get you.

with a hi-res camera i can examine my wounds much more closely than with the naked eye. gross. the one on the top of my nose is mostly hole right now.

---

21.04.05 / 01 / accident

there are two gratings in the street near the office door. tonight while leaving work i fell over one and injured my face on the other. blood everywhere. when i staggered back into the office people thought i had been mugged. spent the evening getting fixed up at hospital.

sum total of injuries:

• bridge of nose cut to the bone by metal grating - many stitches in a small area.
• gash on forehead - some stitches
• other facial cuts
• badly sprained wrist
• grazed and slightly sprained knee

amazingly neither nose nor wrist were broken. the wrist is the worst thing - very painful and immobile. the bridge of my nose is a nuisance - it's hard to wear glasses atm. won't be back at work until i've had the stitches out on monday.

thought about trying out moblogging for the first time, from the hospital with pictures, but i never knew when i'd be called for the next bit of treatment. unlike what you hear, i didn't have to wait too long.

---

10.04.05 / 02 / grandmother

my last remaining grandparent died 4am easter monday in her sleep. she was 98, so this could have happened at any time in the last decade, but still it took us all by surprise. she had been ill but not enough to warn us, and she was getting better.

my mother's mother, who died a couple of years ago, had been leaving us for years, progressing from living in her memories to not recognising her own children to a year-long coma, so her death was almost a relief. my father's mother was 100% mentally - possibly more - right to the end, so her absence is startling - like the death of a much younger person. inside she was always much younger - hated being old with all the ills and physical constraints. she was a forthright, generous, opinionated woman, active and organising. this was a woman who could complain she was tired, and still talk on the phone for an extra hour without letting you get a word in. her house was the centre of the collins family during my lifetime - if you sat in her kitchen talking to her for an afternoon, half the family would pass through, plus one or two more distant relatives, plus neighbours and former neighbours and friends. without her we are de-centred. my aunt, her daughter, has been taking up the role in my grandmother's old age, but she's the apex of a different pyramid so it shifts things.

without grandparents my parents are suddenly the old ones of the family - well they are in their 70s, but now it hits home with no-one 'above' them. my cousins are going grey. where does this leave me? how did we get here?

living in a different part of the country, i only had occasional contact with my grandmother, so the gap is not obvious. it will hit home on my birthday, when for the first time in my life there is no card, and at christmas when we will neither give nor receive presents. my grandmother's card was always the first to arrive at the beginning of december - my heads-up to get my act together for christmas. with her goes the link to a lot of things and places that once were. but this was no longer her time. her time was the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s - the diamond wedding in 1991 the last great event of her life. she outlived her sisters, her husband and her friends. it all passes. i wish there were a piece of software that could turn the memories in your head into video, so we could share the scenes of the past.

by the way there is a telling photograph of my grandmother as a teenager in the 1920s. she is in full flapper chiffon and beads with a foxy expression.

---

10.04.05 / 01 / future world funk

my friend russ jones who co-runs 'future world funk' is ill, so last saturday's fwf was his last gig for a while. i went along to say hi, there's some pics in the photo list. they were taken on my new mobile phone - not too bad.

the guest dj was from miami, he was supposed to do latin but instead played an electro set. now i love electro, but only hear a good set at five year intervals, so this was fine by me. but i was thinking, i remember dancing to this record in a london club in 1986. and then i realised that half the people on the dancefloor with me were babies back then...