Monthly review at the hospital plus 30 minute of intravenous bone nourishing goodness. I am always somewhat adrift when it is in the middle of day. I need to be nice and clean for John, my nurse who gave me such a bollocking last week for driving under the influence of painkillers. So plenty of bathing and shaving. I told Maria I was shaving my legs for him but she didn’t get the joke and called me a numpty. I am looking forward to showing of the degree to which my class A dosage is down. I can manage on none but the nights are a struggle cos everything seizes up so I have to be weak at around 11pm. Still a big improvement.

I have driven a few short distances. To be honest I’m still not entirely happy. I don’t know whether it’s in my head, my new glasses or indeed whether these drugs have a sort of half life and take some time to completely decay. I cannot really describe the experience but things like reversing out of a carpark really tax my brain. I have to crawl so slowly it’s embarrassing and very uncool for a virile male like me.

So long since I have been outraged, what has happened. Ah yes, the phone box obsession.

Here’s an outrage.

The Tory smugness is driving me mad. Let’s be clear what they mean – the only people they care about are hard-working (whatever that means – nothing!), property owning, aspirational, do-gooding, family making – tosspots! Who wants to have anything to do with that sort of person. This country is drowning in them – send them back to where they belong I say, in Volvo wheeled, Barrett boxed, ‘my child is doing after-school-D-of E-poor people-caring-classes, French chalky Teal – container ships bound for somewhere bijou in Normandy. Grr. As I have said many times being a hard-working member of the mediocrity is a crime against the human spirit not a virtue. Long live Teresa May, at least she sings the Tory theme song at full voice and shoots herself in the foot at the same time. They are not all evil dudes nor is every socialist a nice dude but the essential message of conservatism (let’s forget the conservatives for a moment) is always one of conformity. It celebrates enterprise only if that enterprise is targeted at reinforcing some version of the status quo. I suppose the horrifying thing is that that’s what most people want – especially me.

Forgive me if I am repeating myself but when will I learn a basic rule of fixing technology. I spent several days trying to fix a MIDI communication problem between the phone box and the house. The signal kept coming and going. Needless to say I worked on all the hard things first. Laboriously tracing data paths and drivers and everything dense and tricky that I KNEW would be causing the problem. What I discovered 3 days later was that every one of my terminals (miniature binding posts) had been made inaccurately and a tiny sliver of plastic was interrupting the signal periodically. A few strokes of a nail file later and problem solved. THREE DAYS THOUGH? Rule: check – is it plugged in, switched on, is the battery flat is the cat sitting on something important, before reaching for a screwdriver or tinkering with the code, or as all Microsoft users will know, the dreaded, downloading a new driver.

So I have passed some time. I can complete my make-up routine and prepare myself for a probing from John. I was listening to Julian Clarey yesterday. So funny.