Joy.

Something has happened which has made me feel like skipping over little houses, but since I have never talked about this before, not wanting to drag tedious health matters in to contaminate this journal, it will seem of little consequence to anyone who  may look in. But not to me…

For the last few years I have had a problem with my lower spine which has given me a limp and which has become increasingly painful. The last few years have been so overshadowed by Keita’s much worse health problems that whatever was wrong with me seemed unworthy of attention and was more or less ignored.

 I had more or less resigned myself to being confined to a wheel chair within a not too distant future, because at the fleeting consultation I had about it a long time ago  I had been told that nothing could be done and that it would get worse.  Dear Jeremiah, always practical, had tried to comfort me, unsuccessfully, by telling me that it would be perfectly fine: all I would have to do would be to sell my third floor flat and buy one with handicapped access  on  the ground floor, then the NHS would give me not only a wheelchair, but I would be nipping around Ladbroke Grove in one of those electric three wheelers, so what was I complaining about ? It would be quite OK. I can’t say I was convinced, ( I used to ride a Moto Guzzi LeMans Mark2, after all...) but nevertheless, what was there to do, except try and grin and bear it with as much grace as I could muster? I have had a great life…and there would always remain the possibility of the Hurtigrutten, or cruising down the fjords of Norway…so indeed, who was I to complain ?

That was until this week when I met a specialist who told me that whatever prognosis I had been given in the past was completely mistaken! There was nothing terribly wrong with me that a fairly minor operation won’t take care of, and there is even no reason why I shouldn’t ride again ! and I thought that was all over…

The picture seems appropriate as a token of thankfulness: it is from a prayerbook in Djenne, and the picture will appear in an article about the Djenne Manuscript Library written by Anthony Sattin in the upcoming February- March issue of the Christie’s Magazine. The pink colour is painted with ‘Dableni’ the juice of the hibiscus flower.