Day 44 - Too Loud Enough

Suburban nightscape

I've had the craziest day...super busy at work all day, no break, no rest, no time to eat, and some challenging situations to deal with.  Pretty full on...

Straight from work, I went to see my friend who's in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.   My work challenges pale into insignificance beside the challenging symptoms he's having to suffer.   And despite being in there for 10 days now, we still seem to be no nearer a diagnosis, without which it's very difficult to see a way forward.

He will really struggle to look after himself if there's no improvement, let alone to work to support himself.  He doesn't have a wide support network, and I fear he will fall through the cracks of a broken system.

So I'm trying to support him as best I can, as are two or three of his other friends and colleagues - one of us is managing to visit him every day so far.

He is on a lovely ward, in a modern, clean hospital.   The view from his (single) room looks South West across Bourneville (home of Cadbury's, and a visually distinctive place).

During the several visits I've made there over the last 10 days, I've been blessed with a selection of fascinating and even beautiful vista's;

On a sunny Winter's day, the city looked very green, and very clean, and the hills in the distance faded in the soft, hazy light.

In an afternoon storm, lightning flashed across the murky gloom, as sleet and rain whipped horizontally from the West, and the wind howled eerily through the cracks around the unlatched windows.

Tonight's view was an oddly peaceful nightscape across the suburbs, with a little light left in the sky where there was a break in the dark clouds.   The city looked warm and not too crowded, and (as in all these cases) clashed with my internal conception of Birmingham...I might need to open my mind a little on this...

How disturbing!  Eek!

Anyway I got home just after 8pm, after which I needed to eat, write a handful of mails around a complicated system I'm trying to develop to make it easy to arrange lifts for my mum, and catch up with a few people checking up on our hospitalised friend.  

And of course, write this blog!

Now I have to go and dig out guitar cases, amps, cables etc, as I'm off for a jam session tomorrow night, for the first time in years...

It's going to be loud and it's going to be raw...and I'm hoping it's going to be at least a little musical.   

I'm also hoping we can rig up some sort of p.a. system for bass and vocals, else it's all going to be somewhat imbalanced...too many guitarists - you just know how that goes!

Anywho, I think it might be time to adopt a new motto/catchphrase;

"Am I too loud enough yet?!"




Oh, one last thing, every time I visit the hospital, I see this sign, and it makes me giggle like an idiot.   

Surely this can't be a coincidence?!   

:-D

Schindler's lift...