Another night of banging and crashing, with the added treat of there being none of the right antibiotics until the courier got them from another hospital which meant I finally got hooked up to my drip at 12.30. Again dealt with calmly by the lovely ward nurse, and certainly nobody’s fault here, but this is the second time the right drugs have been in the wrong place in 5 days so if its happened to me twice it must happen all the time.. why is this? Because of some bureaucratic malfunction? Mrs Staple is now up and has had a lot of her tubes removed. Incredible that after only 2 days she is able to hobble to the loo. Last night she was sobbing and I could hear the nurse reassuring her” that things would get better”. She had just seen her face in the mirror. A mass of bruises and scars with the ugly staples holding her neck together. I cannot imagine how long she will be here for.

So yesterday I ventured out into the sunshine of London bridge. I was collected by Lucas, Ig and Phoenix who got hold of a wheelchair and off we sped to meet Tashi, Molly, Tony, Ben, Eli and Henry in the pub. The term wheelchair should be used loosely. Yes, it was a chair ( of sorts) but not sure about the wheel.. or the steering

and it preferred to go round in circles rather than straight. Anyway, we got there despite a lot of strange looks from passers by. . Weird to be in the outside world which seemed very noisy and made me realise I am still pretty feeble really ( and very deaf). The London fog came down and there was something Dickensian about our procession of ragamuffins making our way through the winding streets in a proper “pea souper”. I think people thought we had nicked it and were on some weird hen night or something 

The fog reminded me of when we lived in Tokyo where our Japanese friends imagined we lived in a permanent Sherlock Holmes world of pea soupers and muffins with regular visits to Harrods thrown in for good measure

Anyway, it was huge fun, though a bit scary to be out in the real world again, strangely enough I felt safer being back in my bed here at 6.30pm .. interesting how quickly we become accustomed to being institutionalised. And how quickly little decisions become big decisions.. this mornings dilemma.. hot or cold milk on my weetabix? And how we don’t talk about the weather ( because we cant see it).. preferring to discuss the fine array of colours options on display on all the different hospital outfits. When with the ear specialist waiting for some sort of hideously painful torture procedure I found myself complementing him on the colour of his tunic. Well, yes it was a lovely winey magenta kind of a pink but really?  

So today is torture chamber show down day . Do I get to go home? Watch this space