Wednesday, March 18, 2009

18/03/09 Pizza Sex

No, this is not something they didn't have room to fit into the Kama Sutra (or which the editors cut), it's just that there are billboards all over Chambéry advertising the "Aphrodisiac pizza". It apparently involves chocolate, banana, caramel and ginger, is delivered to your door by a man (or at least, male person, for a given value of "male" - this may involve students) on a throbbing mobylette, and each one comes with a free condom. You may not have needed to know that, but I certainly needed to get it off my chest.

In other news, I went off on Wednesday and had my armpit drilled, bored and emptied. First off you remove all shreds of dignity and get kitted up with the bright blue paper disposable knickers and standard hospital smock that does up down the back (my personal feeling is that it's just so that the nurses that then have to do the ties up can make rude comments about yer arse), then onto the slab so that they can have a bash at finding a vein to stick the catheter in. Only took three goes, I suppose I should be grateful - mind you the thing's about the diameter of a garden hose so every time they stick it in it hurts like hell.

Once they actually found a vein to plug it into everything went swimmingly - the next thing I can recall after they pushed the plunger down on the horse-doctor's syringe was lying on a gurney hooked up to a machine that went "Ping!" and, on the third line down on the display, said "Warning! Bad contact!" whenever I wiggled my left thumb. Which, out of boredom, I did quite a lot. It didn't seem to worry anybody, which is probably fair enough. (Could have been worse - Windows For Hospitals V3.01, showing a tasteful skeleton on the blue screen as it reboots.) As, after half an hour, I didn't show any of the classic symptoms of actual death, they wheeled me out, cleaned me up, told me to get dressed and shoved me out the door. Luckily they'd actually wheeled me back into the same room in which I'd left my clothes when stripping off for the amusement of the nurses (possibly by mistake), which meant there was no Benny Hill-style humorous interlude where I run about naked groping nurses. Probably just as well, really - I wasn't really in the mood for that. Nor, by their looks, were the nurses.

Whatever, I'm now waiting for the swelling to go down and to get a bit of feeling back in the skin; the surgeon did say he had to go rather close to the nerves. And in a week or so I might even be able to get my arm over my head! (Why, you may ask, would I want to do that? Good question, don't really know.) Still, living with an armpit which is basically a massive bruise is no fun, and I wish you to know that.

Spring are sprunging, or whatever it does: the garden is full of primeveres (them's primroses to you) and things are generally warming up. Like, to 20°+ today. This is good. On top of that, my ham is curing quite nicely down in the cellar, thank you: another two months or so and it should be good to eat. Miam. And on top of it, the bats are out and flitting around again. Godnose what they're eating

Next Friday we have our annual kulcha outing: down to Grenoble to see the annual English production from Upstage, the theatre club at Europole. We started going when Malyon got involved in her first year there, and we seem to have got into the habit. Don't regret it, always well done - at least as well done as anything we ever managed at MUDS: this year it's "The Ladykillers". Whatever, gives us an excuse to go down to Grenoble, get a decent kebab before the show and then sink a drink or two after it with Mr. Simpson (who has usually sunk his drinks well before we - or anyone else - actually show up, but that's another matter) and Didane, the theatre impresario, who really has to be seen/met to be believed. Will be fun, as always.

Jeremy has more or less decided what he wants to do and it involves cooking. Shock, horror. So rather than go on and do his bac(alaureat) he wishes to do a bac technique before getting a BTS in the "hospitality industry". Surprisingly for someone so big (180+ cm and still growing - sigh) he does not wish to leave home - I suppose he is only 14, after all - so it'll probably be off to Grenoble for him too. Which'll leave us knocking around the house like two peas in a large paper bag - weekends excepted, of course.

Malyon's fine: with her triple-A results she's been accepted for the Dean's course next year, which basically means (I think) that she gets to be a research slavey doing extra work whilst the Dean gets all the credit.Mind you, I might be a bit cynical there. Whatever, she's doing well and having fun - most of the time. Which is good.

Sorry, this is just a quickie by normal standards, but quite frankly there's not that much that's happened. You know that if there were, I'd have told you. So you can, as Frog-persons say, "reprendre votrre vie normale", and/or go back to sleep in front of the TV.

Trevor