Categories: news-from-depressionland, everyday-disasters
Tags: depression, illness, talks
Date: 27 April 2009 16:04:37
Where to begin? It seems the more I have to record in this blog, the less time and energy I have to record it. And a great deal (and not all of it pleasant) has happened in the last few weeks.
I'd like to begin with my trip to the South Coast Seaside Town to give a presentation on depression and hopefully sell some of my books. But I can't begin there because events bound up with my visit actually began earlier that week, when The Grouch had an extremely painful and nasty prostate biopsy (suffice it to say that in the immortal words of Private Jones, 'they don't like it up 'em'). Apart from not wanting to sit down very much, he was fine until a couple of days later when he began to feel ill. However he apparently had no fever (how foolish to trust in an electronic thermometer with a low battery...) and as the advice with the antibiotics they had routinely prescribed, was that they could cause a fever, he put it down to side effects and did nothing.
I was more concerned about him than he was about himself, and tried to convince him that I should cancel my trip. However he insisted I go, as it seems that every time I have a trip away booked, he gets ill. So I went, equipped with presentation, books and iPod for the train. The South Coast Seaside Town did its best for me, assembling at least twenty people, some of them even below the age of seventy, to listen to my wisdom and buy my book (of which I sold four whole copies). All went off well in spite of my hostess's husband having some trouble with getting the CDs to the right track at the right time (my presentation was enhanced with music) - but then he is a very spry 81 and still working, bless him. The most memorable moment of the 24 hours was his remark that, as a non-evangelical, he finds that in general evangelicals always want to talk a lot about themselves. In view of the long stories told my some of my audience, not to mention the Blast from my Past who tagged along and was very keen to talk at great length about all the miracles God had performed for her, I think he is right.
In the morning I was hastily shuffled out because both my host and her hubby were going out, so I had to forgo the possible pleasures of the South Coast Seaside Town, and arrived home early in the afternoon. To find... well, that merits a new entry.