Update plus a little excursion

 Yesterday's view of the terrace

Two weeks later and the situation is a little changed. Wednesday's weekly hospital Xray revealed that the jaw had moved and thus no healing had taken place. Urgent referral to Senior Opinion which was and is, a week's grace will be allowed, then if no change, the consultant will insert three screws in the jaw and tie the teeth together with wire thus keeping the mouth shut. Oh dear, I can already hear the jokes from the wider family about that! As I can get away with a local anaesthetic, not the dreaded full anaesthetic demanded by the bigger operation [exact details, unknown, but consultant and I are united in opposition to that, with the unspoken opinion of Too Old!] I am prepared for the operation some time after next Wednesday. The consultant was stern; you need isolation really so that is what I am now more vigorously embracing. I already didn't answer the phone and have stopped all my activities and refused all visits; now I don't even answer the door buzzer. No swimming either, the man said, just as I was about to resume my daily dip. So I savour what I have and can do; top of that list is my lovely flat and super terrace AND the sunny weather so far to enjoy both. The flat is filled with perpetual sunshine and the terrace is warm and inviting and a little Autumnal. Things could be worse.

 Ken Loach. I Daniel Blake won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes
Film Festival this year and was the only British film selected
to be shown at the New York Film Festival in October 2016

However I am thinking of a Silent Trip, with relevant slip of paper, to the Lumiere to see the newly-released latest Ken Loach film, 'I Daniel Blake'. Ken Loach, celebrated for Cathy Come Home and Kes among many, many other films chronicling the struggles of the poverty and despair of working class life, is my favourite left wing director. I read an interesting interview with him in last week's New Statesman and was delighted to read him dismiss the preponderance of upper-class stories in film and TV, as entertainment while regretting the pigeon-holing of working class narratives as mere social dramas. He finds the British film industry's obsession with the rich and the aristocracy as 'tedious beyond words. And indulgent. It diminishes our self-respect.' The fact that I could only ever stand the first half hour of Downton Abbey because of its predictable plot and stock characters, seemed suddenly right on, instead of my slightly apologetic reaction to the usual disbelief from besotted fans.

I Daniel Blake was splendid and splendidly depressing. My emotions felt deeply stirred as I walked despondently home. It is the story of an ordinary older working class man, a carpenter, honest, likeable, conscientious who loses his job after a severe heart attack. His doctor says he must not return to work yet, and the film chronicles his increasingly bewildered attempts to access the benefits system. Language, computers, systems processes are all used to mystify and obstruct would-be claimants so that, after countless visits, Daniel Blake is no nearer obtaining the temporary financial support he needs. He helps a young woman victim of the system and her two children, sells most of his furniture while desperately lying to people who want to help him like former work mates and his young neighbour. I had no idea of the punitive nature the benefits system; it is consciously cruel as Loach says. Interestingly, also yesterday, there is pious talk in Parliament of simplifying the system to help claimants; let us live in hope. As it presently stands, not only does it punish and obstruct would-be claimants, it puts exquisitely-targeted pressures on staff to conform.





 En route to Damme from Brugge

My teacher daughter, friend and grand-daughter were here for four or five days last week and the 'No speaking' rule was hard to follow. I have discovered how difficult it is to deny oneself this most human of activities. It is almost as essential and normal and spontaneous as breathing. I didn't go out with them at all except for their last day when daughter insisted they take me out somewhere briefly. Never has a short trip to Damme been so enjoyable! I do love that drive along the canal between the dappled trees in the canal-side avenue that seems to continue for miles. We only had time for a coffee, which was a treat indeed, but after we had parked, the girls saw a very inviting shop nearby, with gallery, and they dived in. I hesitated partly because of being tongue-tied and partly through post-Brexit poverty which has induced a wholly atypical reluctance to be tempted to buy anything very much. But the windows looked tempting indeed and eventually I went in to find a marvellous emporium full of signally different and amazing clothes and bags. Suffice it to say, we enjoyed ourselves hugely and I shall certainly go back when I am fully restored to proper speech and buy something to celebrate the return of that wonderful gift. Realistically, that may well be early January

in which case, the sales may well be on. Synchronicity indeed.

 A plain exterior hiding an Aladdin's Cave