annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary
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Cold
It's been a hard few days, having the consultation with what turned out to be the bowel cancer department, looming over everything. I'm meant to be trying to be more present or at least noticing if I'm not, but instead it's been distract-a-go-go. Mostly the knitting, but also yesterday I went to an art exhibition with M.
It was 'sound art'. I really don't want to be one of those people banging on about how shit modern/conceptual art is but I really didn't get it it and nor did M. We sat in the two seats in the spaces designated, in front of a screen which showed a map of Europe, with a big black circle in the middle of the North Sea from which lines emerged that crept across the map and up river estuaries. The sound was pretty muffled but every now and then the word 'Brexit' emerged and the first few bars of a piece of classical music which I recognised but couldn't identify. The lines came and went, the map faded in and out and after a while we decided it was almost certainly repeating so we left, and the artist was just outside with another woman who she introduced as her PhD supervisor, for her doctorate in sound art. Well, that shut us up, as we're not nasty people and we wished her no harm. She showed as a leaflet that we should have seen as we went in, which explained that the piece was about the paths of ancient rivers which had flowed when Britain was part of the European continental shelf and the separation and now even more separation with Brexit. But frankly I was left feeling so what? I mean, we're all pissed off about leaving Europe and this hasn't explained anything further, or enlightened me in any way. Meh.
So we went to have a coffee in the Open Market, which is now under cover, and which smelled horrible as there was a massive secondhand clothing sale going on, filling the entire centre of the space, where you could buy very cheap coats and clothes by the kilo. Loads of people were rummaging about, many of them with multi-coloured hair and tattoos, but not all. I'm not buying any more clothes because I have enough.
Today I finally got the phone consultation, discovered it was from a cancer department, freaked out, but then got discharged because neither me nor the consultant could really work out why I'd been referred. OK, I am very tired but I've recently had a poo test which came back clear, I have lost weight, but over eighteen months eating less, not suddenly and out of nowhere. I have no bleeding or pain, there have been no sudden changes - oh god I just remembered Russell Brand and the pooing on the verge story - but they didn't know about that and it was last summer anyway - so all in all there's nothing there to worry about or to lead me to this clinic. He said, 'I'm discharging you and I'll inform your GP. If your symptoms worsen-" at which point I interrupted and asked what symptoms? And we both laughed and he said I was right, tiredness alone is not a symptom of bowel cancer. Phew.
But that left me feeling proper wiped out - it's the anxiety which does it - so first I thought I'd stay in, then I decided to take the dog to the beach. It was fucking freezing, a nasty north-easterly wind and all that, but very lovely. The light on the water. And tomorrow is another day.
Since when I've been knitting like a mad thing and now bed.
Today I am grateful for being given a clean bill of health. Whew.
12:42 a.m. - 08.03.22
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