Day: February 6, 2009

“I’ve never understood that about the way you people write about us. I mean where did the whole, crazy, allergic to sunlight thing come from anyway? I mean I always thought that Stoker did a good job of making our kind frightening without inventing stuff that simply isn’t true. Why did the writers that came after decide to make us victims of the sun’s rays? Is it just a powerful metaphor? The cleansing, pure light of day banishes evil? Or do mortals need some kind of mollifying belief so that vampires are not so scary, so that we are no threat in the bright light of day? Don’t get me wrong I like that you are scared of us, or that most of you are. It makes staying hidden easier if we are the boogieman, not believed in, but absolutely to be avoided.”

William took another drag of his cigarette, tapped it on the edge of the ashtray and shot me a winning, almost rakish smile before continuing;

“So why aren’t you afraid of me, of us? Please don’t tell me it’s hacks like Rice and Meyer who’ve got you so emboldened?”

So I am pretty much housebound. I’ve mentioned my screwed up, positively buggered right knee due to a stupid mistake that I made while I was skiing, but what I have not told you about yet is that my left knee finally gave up the ghost on Tuesday. Having been expected to do all the work of moving my admittedly too heavy form around the world, my left knee finally threw its hands in the air and said “Screw It! I’ve had enough!”. By the time Cathy had left after dinner, the pain in my left knee was so bad I could barely get out of my chair at the computer and I could barely concentrate. I went to bed, hoping that things would get better with some rest, but when I awoke in the morning and levered myself out of bed the pain of standing up was almost the most pain I can ever remember feeling. By the time I’d availed myself of the facilities – yeah taken a dump – and got myself into a chair I was in so much pain that I thought I was going to throw up and it was getting worse. It occurred to me that I was no pretty sure that I was no longer able to get out of the chair, and I was starting to wonder when it was going to stop hurting. In the end I did what every child of doctors does first; I called my parents. Please bear in mind, they are in Cyprus. There was no way that they could actually help me. They gave me some good advice, though, and on the basis of it I called my doctor and begged for a home visit. After some confusion the doctor came, agreed that it was almost certainly a bad sprain as a result of doing all the work and wrote me up a scrip for painkillers and anti-inflammatories. I managed to get a friend to collect my drugs and by the end of the day I was no longer in agonising pain. Today has been better, but I am really glad that I did not try and go to Preston, as there is still a fair old twinge every time I move out of the chair or do some shuffling around the flat when I move about a bit to keep the joint moving.

The thing is, I am FINALLY angry about all of this, I am desperate to be able to run instead of hobble – I want to be fit, and the infuriation of being stuck with this injury, and stuck in this flat is definitely starting to get to me. If you can read this and want to help out, please come and visit me… 😉

In other news the continued search for work rolls on – I want to stick to the plan and carry on contracting, but the market does appear to be worse off than it looks if you do a search on the core job boards. As far as I can tell there is a lot of briefing jobs that don’t really exist and a lot of leaving jobs on boards even when they are filled going on, but I have had a couple of genuinely positive conversations too, so hopefully I will have more work before the end of February.

Enough for now – I need to write a Ficlet and get some sleep; be well out there…

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EOT