Dearest everybody

I should start by saying there is some joyous news to be shared at the appropriate time, by the appropriate people, you will have to wait and see. For once it’s nothing to do with me or being ill, thank goodness.

I’m writing this sitting on the loggia, in bright sunshine, dictating to Arthur. I feel an awful lot like Delius in Ken Russells amazing film about the last few months of Delius’ life during which time he had Eric Fenby (coincidentally associated with Eyensford) as his amanuensis. At the time Delius was suffering from the end results of syphalis and was completely blind hence he dictated some of his last music directly to Fenby. If I can find the film on Netflix (highly unlikely) I might give it a watch. Cheery material eh? 

I’m writing to everybody to try and explain what’s happened to me. The Chris you knew prior to sepsis has effectively taken a holiday and the new Chris is not one I’m proud to be. The most significant change is my body craves 100% attention, day and night. I’m quite simply unable to read, write, think, about anything other than trying to get better. So all the efforts my beloved family make to find things to distract me eg. Why don’t you listen to this, you’ll love this, watch Wimbledon, etc have no effect on this single minded physical craving to focus on getting well. This leads to a somewhat monochrome existence in which I will spend most of my time asleep or nearly asleep, quite literally staring at the walls. Even my beloved ginger cat brings no relief. That said there is one bizzare extra feature to this recovery process; I have become addicted, and I mean addicted, to head rubs or scratches to the point that grandma’s Mason and Pearson hogs hair brush has never had such rigorous treatment. So my poor children and their beloved, and my wife, quite literally no exaggeration here might spend 30 minutes or longer simply massaging my scalp almost to the point of pain. 

Had I been able to plan all this I certainly would have planned it differently. It would have included at least a lot of creative thinking, if not making, but certainly reading and planning. The fact that it doesn’t and I can’t find the switch to turn it on is something I think I will have to resign myself to. 

Suffice to say there is still a tiny part of me that enjoys hearing your news, however chatty it may be, but the effect is partly almost indigestible. Not as indigestible as the Wittgenstein I was so enraptured by pre-sepsis. But I struggle to assimilate it even if it’s read by somebody else. 

Hopefully this has gone some way towards explaining my evaporation during the last few weeks, along with the psychological issues I’m fortunate not to have too many accompanying pain issues, just a complete absence of appetite. I am in fact a textbook example of someone recovering from sepsis. 

Hope the change in tone doesn’t mean I’ve become unrecognisable, but I always wanted in my blogs to tell the absolute truth and to be true to myself. This is me now. Yuck.