change of table

 The doctor loves theatrics, pregnant pauses and all. That is how he informs this patient that the histology on the mateial removed from the prostate gland is free of any malignaant cells. The doctor seems delighted, it is nice to see that at leasr, somebudy is happy.

In the evening, celebrate the news with a small meal and a couple of drinks at the local Italians. A unsavoury drink sits down opposite and starts to lecture about loneliness. The italians are friendly enougk to allow a change of table,

not lost

 The trip to the reactor today was cancelled, and it is so rainy that it is probably best to stay indoors. Spend the day helping the son find a reasonably priced flat. This is not as easy as one might think.

And the rest of the day is spent making a picture of a small sculpture. This is not as easy as one might think, the small nude is missing her feet. With a tiny piece of fixing putty fix her so that she is floating beefore a sheet of white card on a hidden wire. It is a worthwhile exercise, and for the first time  in a good while the technical camera is used again.

Despite the cancellation the day is not lost

having to leave

 Sit at the open balcony door breathing in the rain-filtered cool air and eat a late breakfast. Outside there is the steady rushing sound of all the more distant drops of water falling whilst the closer ones provide a steady drumming with their percussive striking of any available surface. The sound is relaxing, the taste of the air refreshing.

Between the overhanging roof of the building and the wooden board rail of the balcony the valley slope is visible, covered in deep green trees exuding water vapour in clouds as the steady downpour proceeds. The colours of the roofs, all red and brown tiles, shine beneath a glistening coat of water. The other surfaces, the vertical ones, are white, grey and brown, all kinds of plasterwork protecting the houses from the damp issuing from the air. The sky is a light even grey today, a bright diffusor of cloud leaving all the shadows soft edged and almost non existent.

This is a beautiful experience, there is no need to leave the shelter of the building to experience the soaking wet of the falling water at first hand.

The prospect of having to leave this building for good is shattering.

Engel der Unvernunft

In the passageway between two streets there is a bronze statue sodden with rain. It is in front of a deep green mass of foliage, also dark and wet. The statue is entitled "Engel der Unvernunft" by an artist called R.M.J Koppel

It is a statue of a young woman, seated, with a shaved head.

see for yourself https://www.facebook.com/wenzel.schurmann

worries

There is a thunderstorm outside, rain is pouring down and making a hissing sound on the tiled roofs. It is dramatic, and the cooling influence upon the weather is welcome.

Nothing was done today, nothing much. For the first time the son spontaneously decided to go for a drive to visit some friends. This is fine

Today was a day to make two telephone calls. There was nobody to answer the calls, so left two disjointed messages to say who had called.

Things are better slowly with the post-operative misery. Piece by piece things are improving. Hopefully things will improve more rapidly now, then the whole thing may be forgotten about.

The rain has died down now, there is still thunder rolling. Things will probably get brighter soon, and then later there will be another storm.   

Thoughts and accounts will not come today the way that they usually do. It is a depressing sort of day, the worry about the continued ownership of this house is worrying.

it is good that things seem better anyhow

 Woke up sick, so sick that there was no question of having breakfast. The whole body felt bloated, going to the toilet is agony.

Stay in bed, try to sleep. There will be a doctors appointment at two twenty, he may be able to deal with it.

At eleven in the morning things have improved just a bit. 

The son comes up to the room and offers a cup of coffee, that is kind of him. He stays and keeps his father company, talking about various things. It is good to talk to him, it is good that he has settled so far that he will talk to his father.

The doctor uses his ultrasound device,  and establishes that everything is in order. He says that the urine sample showed signs of a bacterial infection, he said that he would write a prescription. He knows the man who did the operation personally, and spoke well of him. That was the end of the short visit to the urologist.

Buy the antibiotic tablets at the apothecary and then have a cup of coffee and a small piece of Apfel Strudel. The coffee is good and the cake is good too.

Go home and take the first pill. Lie in bed to get rid of the tiredness that just will not go away. It is too hot today. Take the first pill, this is the evening of the first day for this seven and a half day course of medication. There is an early evening storm, there is rain and wind outside, the air gets cooler.

Wake up after a few hours, things seem to be better already. Perhaps this is impossible, but it is good that things seem better anyhow.

Let the father sleep

It is cool in the morning, it would be nice to leave the house. Unfortunately, the operation has left some damage and an infection. It is necessary to visit the bathroom and the occupation there is painful. Tiredness serems to be encroaching from all sides. It is possible to make breakfast and to read the news. Then, reading the news a sudden wave of tiredness. Lie down, sleep, until the next call of nature puts an end to all of that. 

It is uncomfortably hot, and this rearward portion of the old house is poorly insulated, it is icy in winter and really hot in this kind of weather. Open all the doors and the windows, for there are no blinds to keep the sun out.

Try to read again, answer an  email and then collapse back into bed again.

This continues all day. 

The son and the wife go about their business.

Let the father sleep.

Manage to get an appointment at a doctor's practice tomorrow. Let us hope that this doctor will prescribe antibiotics, they would most likely solve this painful problem.

Go back to sleep until the booming voice of the neighbour makes sure that sleep is impossible. Neither he nor his son can speak in any other mode but loudly.

hot and sticky

 There are for plaques on facebook, they are for jewish people murdered by the German authorities in 1942. People notice, and do not just like what they see.

Sleep was deep in the night, there is no telling why. Perhaps it is on account of the continuing healing progress after the operation last week. It is good to be able to sleep again. 

Today was so hot that it was immobilising. It is both hot and humid here. Walk around town, but have no energy to do anything sensible.

The only thing really was to telephone the printers to have them make an offer and to post that picture.

as the sun rises

 A short walk in the morning, before the sun rises much. Take the path by the oxen's keyboard to the  castle, and realise on the climb that the condition of the body has suffered since last year. It is necessary to stop twice on the climb. It does not matter really at all. Follow the path through the park up to the car park on the hill. There are a few other walkers about , and a man engages in conversation at the enclosure containing the Nandu birds. They are as curious and as hungry as ever.

Walk on down to the café at the junction and have a cup of coffee. The offering is not much use today, the coffee is insipid and the croissant is like a yellowe wasps nest without the wasps.

Take the walk up by the river and return home at half past nine.

Lie down on the made bed, the muscles in the legs are stiff. This exercise will have to be taken more often, being in poor condition is just not good.

Now, as the sun rises, the day gets hotter and hotter. What with the exercise and the remaining after effects of the operation last week this day can be nothing else but inactive.

it is new to this person

 Postoperative lethargy has set in, things are not the way they were before, and there is the concern that they may not improve significantly. They should, but what on earht if they do not? The wife returned yesterday evening after some days being elsewhere and had a horrible story. She had bought a cheap house and the structure is a disaster. As is always the case with these things, it just got worse as times went on.

The only good thing is that there is not much money involved, but she has the liability.

She may pass the liability on to her moderately estranged husband and her young son. 

Things are seldom to good to be true, they are usually just not true. This is a problem that is resting in the future now, and life will not be simpler because of it. 

The cat has become most sociable, it never really goes away far. It is below the table now, at night it is on the rug or next door on the guest bed. The small animal wants company.

Postoperative things are strange, there is nothing as strange and uncomfortable as a fresh internal operation. Well, it is new to this person.

too late now to commence

 The first late summer light of the day outside, go downstairs to the bathroom. There is still blood, but it is not so bad as was expected on the basis of the doctor's prognosis. The wound inside the body is probably now healing nicely. This is all very good.

Go into the kitchen and start to clear things up, empty the dishwasher  and then fill up the dishwasher and start it. The dishwasher is still as it was from the time before the hospital, now slightly mouldy. This is all inconcievable, there are people living here, there is a detergent tab to place and a button to press. It is not any more difficult than that.

Go back upstairs, rest, read, let the mornings dizziness take its course.

Today is a day to take it easy.

Later, downstairs again, empty the dishwasher and clear away the things. Speak to the son about the dishes in his room. He agrees that they must be done, but he insists on having the dishwasher all to himself and the dishes that he has used. These dishes have partly been in his room for nearly six months now, they are strangely lumpy and dusty.

This is all to bad, remark to him that it is really too late now to commence the upbringing that had been ignored up until now

Roughly one hundred kilometres

 It is now past midnight, therefore it was yesterday that started in the morning with the old man in the bed screaming in his sleep about needing to go to the toilet. The old man is fourteen years older than the teller of this story, and his life has not just been longer but harder too. He screams and groans and then is quiet.

At six it is light and the night nurse comes in to the room to check. The man now asks her for a painkiller, look at his face and see that he is crying tears. The night nurse is a woman with black hair and elongated black eyelashes and bloated lips, her arms are covered in tattoos. She goes into full emergency mode, checks the pipes connecting the man to  a bladder under his bed, trying to console him speaking the local dialect in a loud clear voice. She runs out to the stores and comes back with  a very large syringe full of clear liquid and using all her strength forces the liquid up the catheter, and then pulls it back down again. She does this again, thereby clearing the blockage. The man sighs in relief, his pain has gone. The nurse earnestly tells him that the next time that he feels such pain he is to use the emergency button. "Immediately" she yells, in a dialect. The woman is really concerned. Then she leaves the room, carrying a pail full of bloody urine, her flip flop slippers slapping the ground and her dyed black  hair blowing behind her.

There is a final examination to be made, an ultrasonic inspection. Say goodbye to the two men in the ward, the one that will stay there for a longer time, and the one who has been dismissed today. He is happy, his operation was a success and his cancer was removed. The other has an agglomerate  of illness, something urological and something cardiological and finally some mysterious chronic infection of staphylococcus aureus.

After the examination have a large cup of coffee in the cafeteria and then go out into the park to wait for the son.

He has kindly offered to collect his father, a round journey of roughly one hundred kilometres.

busy

 Hospital, now it is the third day. The catheter is removed, and nothing seems amiss. It is strange to be fitted with an extra pipe, a mechanical device. Tomorrow will be the end of the time here, the son will do the collecting thing tomorrow in the old car.

Hospitals are strange. There is the noisy exuberance of the night staff contrasting with the busy efficiency of the day staff. The night staff behave much as is portrayed in television series, the day staff are much more quiet. They all work using computers now, the days of heavy paperwork are over years ago.

The weather outside is hot and dry, it is nice to stroll around the grounds of the clinic.

The noise from the street isincredible, Regensburg is a larger town and really very busy.

hospital

 As always, awake at five. Realise that there are tubes fixed to the arms, realise that the bodies waste water is flowing out through another, and that there is one supplying water to flush the system.

There are two other men in the room who have been fitted with similar equipment.

Later on the top doctor came by, stared at the patients and made his wise comments.

Afterwards, breakfast was served.

walk, and do not walk.

 one day later, for yesterday was the day of the operation. Yesterday started early, the son put his driving skills on display to deliver his father to the railway station. The train left the station punctually, and after only stopping once arrived in Regensburg at a quarter past six in the morning Arrive at the hospital at a quarter to seven, that was a pleasant walk. 

At the hospital events took their course, it was like  being part of a mechanism from then on.

The operation was done with inside hours, and the one who had walked smartly through Regensburg was now in bed with dead inert legs waiting for the anaesthetic to wear off.

It does not do a thing.

 Recovery from last nights meeting is slow. The sculptor drinks a lot and keeping him company leads to a hangover this morning. Perhaps this should not be, in the light of the operation that is to take place tomorrow.

It is probably better to take things easy, and to see that yesterday is yesterday and tomorrow is not here yet.

Breakfast is made under the angry glare of the spouse, and avoiding the enormous heap of dirty clothes and suitcases in the kitchen left by the son upon his return from Lunebourg yesterday. The cat draws attention by butting her head hard against the cupboards. Bend down and pat her head and stroke her back.

She commences to purr.

The coffee is bitter and black and it does not get rid of the headache. It does not do a thing.

Patients are not prisoners

A telephone call at the end of the morning, the hospital informs that this patient is required to be in the hospital at six in the morning.

The hospital is in Regensburg. There is no way that the car may be parked anywhere.

That will not work.

The woman then says that there are no choices in the matter. The operating theater will just go unused. Tell her that the appointment was at half past seven originally, this is doable with the train from Landshut.

Tell her that this appointment can be held.

She puts a jingle on the phone, listen to stupid messages and bad music.

The appointment is now at eight thirty.

Think that this is all silly. It was unecessary, and friendliness would have cost her nothing. Patients are not prisoners. 

Resolve that the old appointment will be held anyway. The telephone call may have been a hoax, the name was unintelligible and is now forgotten.

too late

 Awake too early, as every day. Once standing, stay that way, make a breakfast and start to work. There are  pictures to place in a desktop publishing program which is being used for the first time. It is not a program that costs much money, but it is quite different from the old systems which did.

It takes a long time to very little, all the menus are different even though the functions are much the same-

A message just before twelve says that the time for the meeting is imminent.

And the whole afternoon was spent in pleasant chat and copious consumption of coffee.

Needless to really say at all, the system functioned perfectly in the evening, when it was all too late.

corrupt

Saturday the Twelfth of August and the mornings rage abated. The matter of the refused picture at the exhibition is infuriating, it having been refused before the jury made its decision. The jury is just whitewash. There will be no participation next year, it is hard enough to make the decision to place an entry without having to put up with corruption.

bah.

Made a print in the morning for the artist who wanted the print last night. The search for the picture among the old hard discs took almost an hour, but then it was found. With the new understanding of the software it was possible to clean up the colours more than had been hitherto possible.

Pop the print into an envelope and bring it over to the artists studio. He is not there, he will only be there in the night. He is a night owl and he is proud of it. Leave it at the door, he will most likely find it.

 The gathering of the opinionated arty crowd is boring shit as usual, but it is possible to pick up the picture. They all like it , and the owner of the gallery holds his peace.

There is no going back for it now

Go into a shop looking for glue. It is a shop in the mall, the glue that is needed is a contact adhesive. The only glue available is an all purpose glue. Leave that shop and go to the basement grocery store and buy eggs, a baguette and some sausage. This is all in order, except that half way home realise that the cat food and the glue have been forgotten.

In the main street there is another big shop selling both of these items. Down in the basement there is cat food. Spend time sorting through the flavours even though the cat probably does not care. Put six cans into the basket, and then get some sanitary articles and then go upstairs to the till. Pay for these items.

Half way up the main street realise that no glue has been bought.

Well, to hell with the glue, it is going to have to wait. There is no going back for it now.

about three hours

 The bells outside toll five times, get up out of bed on the fifth and after the sixth ring silence the alarm set yesterday at six.

It is all very punctual.

Take a shower, and eat nothing, no breakfast or anything like that. The cat jumps onto the knees and enjoys being petted first thing in the morning, issuing purr sounds with a bit of a squeak to them.

Then go down to the car, and start the short drive to Regensburg.

The people in the clinic are all very friendly and helpful. Just the amount of water that needed to be drunk was incredible. Finally, it became necessary to make excuses and then to inform the nurse that the bladder was full. She handed over a slip of paper with a bar code upon it and showed the way to a special toilet. This consisted of a urinal with a bar code reader. After explaining the use of the barcode system the young  woman left. The urinal showed a graph of the pisser's progress. It then showed a message informing that the results of the analysis had been sent on to the doctor.

Then it displayed the original message, requesting a bar code. 

It did not say "thank you for observing all safety precautions", that would have been an unreal experience.

Return to the waiting room, and when all is done have a cup of coffee in the hospital canteen.

The whole business took about three hours.

as it was meant

The day begins as is meanwhile usual, downstairs to the bathroom, and whilst being downstairs make breakfast. Feed the cat, the feline is instantly awake and begging.

Only take two eggs toay, there is no need to overdo things. Fill the coffee maker and  put water into the pan. Add salt to the water in the pan, and a dash of vinegar. Turn on the gas under the two utensils, then go into the hallway to the cupboard where the crockery is kept, get a plate, a cup and a saucer.

Take two slices of raw toast from a plastic bag decorated with images  American flags and place them on the toaster.

The first thing to be ready is the coffee maker, turn off the gas underneath that to prevent a meltdown. Then the water in the pan starts to boil, crack open the eggs one by one and drop them into the boiling water. This stops boiling, after all those eggs came straight from the refrigerator. As soon as the water  starts to boil again depress the handle on the toaster, and wait.

Whilst waiting, fill the coffee cup.

When the toaster has popped, take out the two slices of toast and butter them. Then use the ladle with the holes in it to remove the eggs from the water and to place them on the toast on the plate. Rinse the pan and the ladle and leave them on the rack by the sink. 

Push the two slices of toast over to the one side of the plate and place the coffee cup on the other half. Balance the whole ensemble with the knife and fork and take it upstairs. There, at the table with the news on the computer enjoy the poached eggs on toast. The news is all about the right wing trend in the world, about simple minded people believing that an autocrat with sweeping powers will have their interests at heart. They use their democratic powers via the vote to cement the powers of these nasties.

Then, clear away the breakfast things and start to tidy up and clean the flat, and do that for a further hour or so.

In the late morning leave the building and go to visit the photo shop to inquire about the progress of the camera.

See here - the thing has just arrived back from its sojourn at its makers. Check the camera in the shop, the focussing fault seems to be no more. Also the vertical displacement in the rangefinder has gone. This was a repair under guarantee, and it seems to have worked this time.

This is a surprisingly great joy, to be able to use this highly expensive camera as it was meant to have been used.

fit perfectly

 The night was cool, and it was easy to sleep. Cool, as in temperature, not a youthspeak idiom signifying approval.

Resolve to go out to buy another set of shelving. They are useful to put things into, things that otherwise are left lying about

Drive to the furniture store, take it elasy the whole way. Because of the holidays, there are many people at this store, buying furniture that they are going to have to assemble themselves. Take a parking space just abandoned by a happy shopper. Go upstairs into the big store, and join a queue that is waiting for food in the restaurant. The place is full, and people all push and shove, all those people who believe in their entitlement to be first for whatever reason.

 Then wander through the store, find a cheap pillow and stylish cardboard box.

At the exit, there is the place with the shelves. Load a cart, and leave bia the self service checkout.

In the parking place there are pedestrians everywhere. Be very careful backing out, there are children running about with no regard whatsoever for traffic, and their parents all seem otherwise occupied as well.

Succeed in leaving the place without flattening any persons or animals, and take the motorway journey back home.

Leave the shelving in the car for the time being, take the box up to the flat and assemble it. 

The pictures that have been stacked awaiting sorting fit perfectly.

And the morning has been dealt with already.

only the cat for company

It is evening now, it is five past six. The day was spent in slowly catching up with the things that could be done, small chores, cleaning things like the cat tray after wandering about town to buy cat litter. They are selling luxury cat litter at nine Euro per bag. Maybe this makes the cat defecate with more pleasure and comfort than the cheap stuff. Somebody say what is going on. Cat litter with silicon pearls. What is happening to the world?

Move the car from the distant parking spot to a better one nearby. Yesterday's journey to the Czech Republic was interesting, but not productive. It was good to see the Bohemian landscape.

Today is spent, but a tiny portion of the housework has been done. The quiet in the deserted building with only the cat for company is pleasant.

mad

 A touch of other madness, take a long drive into a foreign city. It is a long drive and the meal there was dissapointing,

It was  a tour worth taking.

The beauty was in the landscape, the town was just a strange place

The highlight there was a cup of coffee with a delicious tart.

It was a journey, and the scenery on the way there was fantastic.

The return was just rainy and stormy, very heavy rain indeed.

And the cat was sitting on the chair waiting for the human's return.

There is no help for it, this person is going completely mad.

There was nearly five hours of driving just to look at the buildings of a town.

Sleep will come eventually.

 The bed transmits the sound of the deep vibrations of a concert somewhere in the town. It is four in the morning and the vibrations of the thumping bass from the amplifiers of some nightly party somewhere is travelling through the walls and the floors of the old building. The mechanical thumping is not really loud, but it is clear in the silence of the night. The church bells are louder, but the steady drum and bass noise is more irritating. The more treble parts of the entertainment can be heard occasionally in the far distance, but the prime source of the disturbance are the drums and the bass.

The two clocks in the studio are ticking away to themselves, they are making a continuous noise. But the ticking will not penetrate the door or the walls to the bedroom as the bass sounds from the distant event are.

There is sleeplessness too because yesterday was such a sedentary day. It will be said that this is a personal fault. 

But now these things can no longer be corrected. Sleep will come eventually.

The son is downstairs, packing his things for a visit to Berlin. Offer to drive him to the railway station, he refuses in a fit of independence. He is nineteen years old, this is fair enough. Hear him leave the house, after having said his goodbye.

Half an hour later, there is a frantic knocking on the door. He had to return, as he had forgotten something.

Now he needs a lift to the railway station, or he will be late.

Put on clothes, and walk with him to the car. It is a short drive to the railway station, a distance of two kilometres.

Still, that would have been another half an hours walk. Say goodbye on the platform, think about how many farewells have been experienced on platforms.

Return home, make a cup of coffee. It is now six in the morning, it will be wroth returning to bed.

Sleep will come eventually

they do not need to

 The disturbance will not let go, the mind refuses to do things. Easy things that are at hand will be done, but nothing else.

Breakfast: realise that the son has left the house and refuses to talk. The wife has gone too, and the cat has disappeared. The shower is wet and cleansing.

Empty the biological waste container, before it starts to smell or something worse. Clean the sink in the kitchen.

The feelings say that it is all hardly worth doing, the mind is saying that some things must be done. A short walk about town, to buy liquid soap and a storage chip for the camera. 

Two huge parcels arrive, and one smaller parcel with very little inside. A tripod, a light tripod for a light camera. 

There is no real point in today, it is just a matter of waiting now. Things will get better, they surely must. This evening the picture of the ice cream is due to go to the gallery. Let us see what the jury says about it. It is just one of the things that should be cared for.

It is hard to bear the streets now with all those loud voices and shrill laughs.

pretty couple

 Depressions are revolting, they leave you motionless and alone. Wake up, get up, resolve to start, and then that is all.

Why bother?

Bother because you want to stay alive and well.

The sleep catches up at eleven in the morning, after a walk about town. Now there is not much point in doing anything.

People are friendly, that is nice enough. But the streets are full of shouting strangers and struggling shoppers and children that scream. The man selling the sandwiches is friendly, but what is to be made of it all? The sounds of the voices are louder now, and they are everywhere.

A woman with tanned brown skin walks by, she is wearing black shorts and a black t shirt.

She has a German shepherd dog with her, he has brown fur on his legs and around his snout. Otherwise, he is black too.

A pretty couple.

two pictures from Fürth

 Wake up and realise that things are as they always are. It is not pleasant to wake up in your own house and to have the feeling of there being no entitlement to be there.

Never mind these stupid thoughts, go downstairs and wash, and drink up the coffee left by the son. He has already left for work.

Then spend time fixing both pictures that were made in Fürth yesterday. The one is of a barber shop and the other shows a factory that had belonged to a company making and selling leather goods. It is the most extraordinary factory building.

Waking up and realise that there is nothing to eat. This causes hunger for food, even though there is no real reason to eat now, it should be possible to live off the fat on the body for quite some time. Go shopping, and buy a meatloaf bun at a fast food fattening place.

Take the shopping home and enjoy an apple on the way.

from the middle of the last century

 The excursion was nice. It was a nice rainy day. It was good to the friend from long ago once more. And the town of Fürth has become more beautiful in time, money has been spent in the correct places. Spend the time looking and chatting.

Spend an hour in a museum for jewish history, watch the video production of the reading from a book by a man called Wasserman, questioning whether you can be both Jewish and German. He lived from 1873 to 1934. It was a well made video and an interesting show.

End that day with a cup of coffee and a cake, and take a picture of the Letra building,  now turned into flats, all very fashionable.

But the building is great, a fantastic example from the middle of the last century.