A Possible Hiatus

Image from Wikimedia Commons, of course

I've recently undergone retinal surgery, and my recovery from this appears set to take rather longer than I had anticipated. There are no causes for concern, I just hadn't done enough research into the post-operative conditions with which I am having to deal.

The most aggravating of these is the presence of a bubble of air in my left eye, which is behaving precisely the way the bubble in a carpenter's spirit level does... right down to the wobbling whenever the frame around it (i.e. my head) moves. The consequence of this bubble's behaviour is such that typing sets off a riot of jiggling movement in the affected eye. And this movement, after not very many minutes at all, induces a sort of motion-sickness. Nausea is not remotely conducive to creativity.

So I'm not currently able to write: this note is, in fact, the largest number of words I've been able to type in nearly a week. The Bonny Blue Flag posts that have been appearing this week were formatted and scheduled a week ago; when chapter two concludes I won't have any more material available for publishing. Let's hope that by the middle of the month I'm feeling better able to manage a keyboard.

In the meantime, I can read and watch movies without too much difficulty. So I've been entertaining myself by revisiting Kurosawa (Yojimbo, Sanjuro) and by doing something I'd always meant to but somehow never got around to: reading adventure novels from the nineteenth century. I started with Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo (I read the abridged version, which is 530 pages; the unabridged translation is something like 1,400 pages long and I'm not that desperate for entertainment), then went on to The Three Musketeers (Dumas was clearly paid by the word).

From Dumas I went forward fifty years to Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda. This novel was spoiled for me, somewhat, because decades ago I read George MacDonald Fraser's Royal Flash, which rips off retells the story so completely the only new thing about the book, for me, was Hope's writing style. About which the less said the better.

Anyway, I am within the possible limits of recovery enjoying myself, and hope to resume posting on a more regular basis fairly quickly. Don't be dismayed, though, if I have to take a week off.

Stay tuned to this channel.