13th November 2000

I am recovering.

From the longest week I have ever had, labour week. On call almost every day till at least 8 pm, 8 am the next morning most days. I got home Saturday morning at 7 am, and slept till Sunday, missing my Saturday shift. I had a complicated delivery on Friday; it shouldn't have lasted that long and I thought it would all be over in time for me to knock off at 8pm. I remember the midwife giving me the choice of two patients; naturally, I chose the patient that would ultimately require a forceps delivery, and experience a horrendous postpartum bleed bringing her to the brink of shock, and requiring three units of blood infused stat. The medical student, of course, found gainful employment compressing bags of Hartman's into her as quickly as he could, and generally being the calm, quiet unnoticed and unappreciated extra hand that only the parents noticed. Baby was quite well, fortunately.

So I'm still recovering, two days later on Monday. Thank God Th asked me for two movies last night, both funny ones (Coyote Ugly - Piper Perabo looks uncannily like a teenager I once knew, although just a touch cuter) and The Wonderboys, followed by a wonderful dinner at Belgos, and then I slept the sleep of the dead till this morning, which still wasn't *quite* enough. The long-haul ten-minute walk into Family Planning clinic at 12 pm almost killed me, and the three hours of listening to women being told about contraception and Deep Vein thrombi pretty much finished me off. All I wanted, on the way home, was a nice long soak in the tub, and maybe a bit of a sniff.

I had a lot on my mind on the walk home. Nothing new, pretty much the same problems that have plagued me for the longest time, nothing new, something old. Then I reached home, and decided to go for a walk instead. I take random walks on occasion, but I usually take the tube to embankment and make my starting point the Thames. Today, I just chose a random direction and walked.

For an hour, up a little-walked road, past little-known hotels, up a quiet serene little hill. The sunlight (sunlight!) streamed over my left shoulder, gently illuminating the left walkway by the road, upon which I was. It was quite a long road up a gentle incline, so that by the time I reached the summit I was quite some distance up. I turned back, and headed for home. It was a beautiful sunset today (at 3 pm), with that intensity of sunlight that makes you squint as it streams hungrily into your eyes, but does little in the way of warmth. Temperature-wise it was pretty much an Australian winter - warm, for London in autumn. I saw the a bush with its last green leaves rippling in the sunlight, sunlight trapped in ornate black wrought iron London Lampost tops - the type you see in all English pre-war movies, a park savouring its last moments before it lost its leaves, yellow leaves everywhere on the ground, and the BT tower far in the distance, glowing gold in the setting sun, and looking uncannily like a very large lamp post. I saw people, so many people, oblivious to the beauty around them, seeing only where they wanted to go, and who they wanted to beat to get there. I saw a child skipping down the sidewalk laughing, and realised she saw the world through the same eyes I did. And I felt just a little bit old, but just young enough to be thankful that I saw the things I saw, and not the burnt out cigarette butts and coke cans on the ground, and the grafitti on the walls around me. Of course, I saw those too - but they weren't all I saw. On the way home, the sun had fallen so low on the horizon that it only lit the tops of the trees and rooftops, and I wished I could sprout wings, and fly into eternity.

I've run my bath now, and in a moment I'm going to go fall asleep in it, but I don't feel quite as sniffy as I did before my walk. I sometimes wish I could show you the things I see - I don't know if you still see the world through my eyes (where once I would have assumed you did), or whether you're seeing it through a grown-up's eyes now. But wherever you are, I hope, if only for an instant, you remember how to see the sunlight, and perhaps even remember me.

I have no illusions about my writing. (This coming after watching "the wonderboys") It doesn't have a form, and it doesn't have a particular eloquence. It's just real-world thoughts that I try to convey, in their bare, naked un-dressed forms. I don't have any illusions about myself either. I'm not a happy bunny - not by far. But I don't want to wallow, and I don't want to walk in the dark. Self-destruction just doesn't really work for me, although it's hip, cool and trendy. Fags and alcohol, that's what the English economy runs on. I'd rather walk in the light and warmth, and try to turn the depths to which I occasionally plunge, the torn memories and regrets, into something good and clean. I try my best to care for my patients as best I can, and to help them in what ways I can - and sometimes, I hope at least, they appreciate it. I will never be called warm, kind and caring - I don't have the height, looks or dazzling smile to impress people that way. (Th tells me I underplay myself, but I think I'm just being realistic) I'm quiet and gentle, and that never really makes an impression if you're male. I doubt I'll be remembered by many of my once-friends. I feel myself slipping out of their worlds now, quietly and gently, into yesteryear. Once in a while I miss a few of them, one of them more acutely than the others, and wonder if you ever think of me? But it doesn't matter that much (or does it?), because in my head, and my own life, I'm still alive, and I still have my odd moments when I walk through sunlit lanes, and smile.