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'A gaping silken dragon,/Puffed by the wind, suffices us for God./We, not the City, are the Empire's soul:/A rotten tree lives only in its rind.'

Tuesday 2 October 2012

'like a thief in the night'

I was intending to be walking in North Yorkshire this week, with wanderings through beautiful Swaledale, and hiking up onto the North York Moors. I should have left on Saturday. Instead, I spent three days in hospital, and now know that my feeling of being below par was more than a feeling. After much needle stickings, scans, X-rays etc, it was established that I have a pulmonary embolism - blood clots in the lungs to you and me. When the doctor told George Orwell that he was lucky that the round which passed through his neck missed anything vital, Orwell replied that he would have considered himself lucky if the shot had missed altogether. I get Orwell's point, but I am lucky, as walking up into the North York Moors would have, in all probability, seen me off. 'I will come like a thief in the night'.

On the up side, being in hospital meant that I was able to finally finish Paul Elliott's The Last Legionary, which is a very neatly put together book - full marks. I also had time to read this little known Nevil Shute:
Although it was first published in 1928, it took Shute two years to write (his day job at the time was working on the R101), and it is a fine piece of 1926 General Strike literature - full of international Bolshevism, fellow-travelling Members of Parliament, disgruntled trades union officials, stalwart English craftsmen, country houses, veterans of the Great War, rural versus industrial life, flying (of course - a Breguet XIX is at the centre of the action), and, very interestingly, the view that Italian fascists were fine fellows - 'I liked the look of them', says the hero of a squad of Northern Italian Blackshirts. A fascinating period piece, and the 1959 cover of the edition I have is another period piece. I've always found all this sort of stuff interesting - looking up from where I am sitting, I realised that most of the books (with the exception of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson), and the models are all early twentieth century:


14 comments:

  1. Vexed to hear of your recent health problems- hope you will be feeling much better very soon.
    best wishes
    Alan

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    1. Thanks, Alan. I'm apparently looking at months before I'm going to feel more on top of things. But that's ok.

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  2. Hope your feeling better , all the best Tony

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    1. Cheers, Tony. I did feel more cheerful today realising that sick leave is involved!

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  3. I hope you're better sir!

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  4. Neville Shute`s On The Beach is one of my favorite books.

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    1. Wasn't there a 50s/early 60s film of On the Beach ? I've got Shute's first novel - Mazaran - on order & looking forward to it.

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    2. yes gregory peck was the sub commander.black and white..it was very faithful to the book. i`d recommend it!

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    3. Good - I'll hunt for it. I have a very vague memory indeed of watching it, 40 or so years ago. Time for a re-watch!

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  5. All the best for a speedy recovery Stephen.

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    1. Cheers, Paul. Your continuing efforts spurred me on this evening to do some plastic armour bashing!

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  6. I didn't see this when it was first written and only came across it while going through my blog backlog.

    I hope you feel better soon. Mrs Kinch sends her best wishes.

    I am reliably informed by Mrs Kinch's great uncle (who was trained in the late 30s by his personal waiter) that the Emperor Franz Joseph maintained rude good health by eating potato soup when he was feeling poorly and taking regular rides in the Vienna Woods.

    I urge you to follow his example.

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    1. My thanks, kind sir! And thanks also to Mrs Kinch, who has had such health difficulties. I am certain that the Emperor was quite correct. Unfortunately, my potato crop this year has been non-existent (scarily so), and I doubt my horse potential, given my dreadful co-ordination problems (a result of too many years covered in the dust of libraries). But, it would be a fine cure.

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