Left-handed episode

It's just over a fortnight since my accident when I broke my arm.  Superficially the wounds are healing. There are some bizarre sensations and I've been back to see the surgeon who is helpful and shows me x-rays to prove that the repair, a rod through the centrecof the bone fixed by screws at each end, is as solid as a rock, and all the weird things I feel are due to massive haematomas.

So healing will take a while, and meanwhile I am finding out what can, and can’t, be done with one (left) hand. Several wine related things not - opening bottles and dispensing from wine boxes for instance, but pouring and drinking are still possible. I can restock the wood store one-handed and do a bit of cooking, but my knife skills are restricted to bananas which is... well, limiting. 

Mary is brilliant and has developed good supplementary dog skills now she takes them out al the time - too much excited barking from Elvire was met with a quick spray from a water bottle so now just picking up the bottle silences her!  in fact the dogs are just fine and their occasional excavation of a waste bin easily solved by emptying the bins!. 

Nurses come and go and are friendly and efficient. Pain from the wounds mixes with the old sciatica but neither is unsupportable. Above all I am glad to have a warm comfortable place to be in and wonderful if cold, bright Languedoc weather - so much snow not too far away but none yet here. And I am so glad to have the best companions, human and canine, in my bubble. 

Apart from a most enjoyable watch of the Detectorists box set there has been plenty of football to watch recently, and amid the giant-killing upsets of the FA Cup we really enjoyed the unequal match between  Spurs and Marine (Marine and Mourinho!) OK, no giant-killing there, but an entertaining match between 2 teams more widely spaced in the leagues than ever. Oh, and Marine had in their squad James Joyce, Neil Young, Robbie Williams, David Lynch... but no T S Eliot nor even E M Forster. A good cultural afternoon all the same!

Mary would be at a loss without a good knitting project.  Her latest completed one has been a Fair Isle cardigan for my niece Katherine, which is the final photo in this gallery.  it's a year since her dad, my younger brother Tom, died, so she in much in my thoughts just now.  Among others in our family often in our thoughts is Sam's wife Saskia who as a primary teacher is struggling to keep up with confusing govt guidance.  The current government’s default is to blame people. It has long been a scandal (I think back into Blair/Blunkett days) that teachers and schools who so often are the real experts and heroes are seen as falling short rather than being brought into creative solutions. Now more than ever we need a partnership approach rather than a belittling process. So seeing yet more of this from the current Secretary of State, I ask myself why cannot the govt trumpet the positive messages about how well schools are doing?

I am an enthusiastic new subscriber to the London Review of Books. Not nearly as narrow in scope or genre as its title might suggest, the article here called ‘Get the jab’ by a clinical expert is well worth reading. 

Hunting and wild animals are often in the news here and elsewhere, with lockdowns and reduced activity have led to burgeoning growth among plants, and unchecked breeding of many animals.  The hunters here are under pressure to control wild boars but the market for their meat has plummeted, as has that for venison in the UK where flourishing herds threaten to change whole landscapes.  Some people want to encourage predators like wolves which are already a problem here on the continent of Europe.  Deer can just about stand up to them, but sheep certainly not.  What would Little Red Riding Hood say?

The photos this time are from our wonderfully sunny January, but to end here is a cartoon by Simone Lia - in this strangest of times, all sorts of things are coming out of the closet, but having broken our last vacuum flask we had to buy a new one to take soup to the homeless people in the town.  however cold, it is, it's at least dry for them at the moment.