Sad tidings from our colleagues in Poland

A drawer full of old valves; nothing you'd want to keep

How long had he been asleep? thought Caroon, slipping back into both unconsciousness and the third person.

But whatever he may claim in his weaker moments, one question must be answered: if unaccountable headaches are the root cause of this hospital stay, then why is there a metal tube inserted between two of his lower vertebrae? What is the tube connected to at the other end? And the fluid that can be heard gurgling inside it: is it going in or coming out?

Lie down. Lie down.

They've done nothing to me yet, but the changes were underway long before I was brought here. Those children at the funeral. I had no idea what to even say to them. And people I had known years ago, all wearing black suits. Granted, I managed to crack a few jokes. But I always manage that, somehow or other. I couldn't manage to sit among them, though, at the table, when the tea and ham sandwiches were being served. Nor could I do anything useful when tears began to appear at the corners of most everyone's eyes.

Whatever connects me to the world is breaking, sundering, dissolving. And I don't want it to.

Gracious. For a moment there I thought I was referring to my own funeral.

Silly me.

That won't be for a while yet.

"Scatterjack a-dawning/Winter's yawning"

A new edition of my "Per Ardua Ad Astra" reaches me, fresh from the publishers, messrs Wacklow, Futtle and Crun. I see that they've gone with a variation on Page's original cover illustration, featuring myself, Drake and Hood, and there's a generous selection of Sally's photographs- eight pages, I think- placed aprropriately enough between chapters seven and eight (which chapter includes an account of the mission's first complication, during which the camera was lost; three exposed rolls of film, however, were safely secreted about Sally Hood's person).


She cut my hair- gave me a trim, really- in that little compartment of the Spitfire that doubled as kitchen and lounge (and was soon to be pressed into service as a morgue). Perhaps I should have included such details in the book? Is the scientific community of saltpetred greyheads really interested in such day-to-day minutiae as which tin of Spam we opened at which particular point in the debacle?

Sally it was, also, who calculated the seasons of the moon and taught us all to remember them by means of a simple rhyme. A song, actually. I wish I could remember it now.

She kissed me once, too. Should I tell them that as well? And if I do, what will I have left then?

At play in the toyshop of the Lord

An inquiry as to the nature of the operation- long postponed- that I must undergo has thrown up yet more problems with the clerical system here at Saint Feasance's. My records are incomplete and, if I didn't know better, I would almost swear that a raving person has been amusing himself in the office.

The staff are eager to help, of course. But so many of the files appear to be missing that I may need to have certain of the preliminary tests again (and I'm not looking forward to renewing my brief acquaintance with the hydraulic catheter, I don't mind telling you!).

The briefest of glances was enough to tell that even the x-ray photographs were not all mine, this despite the fact that my name was clearly affixed to all of them. But I do not have that amount of shrapnel in my chest cavity, nor am I missing a chin.

The incision you made in my heart has yet to heal. Take off your mask, for god's sake, and give us a kiss.

A card arrives from the old gang at the Experiential Apparatus Establishment at Choking Down, wishing me a swift recovery from my 'recent operation'.

I smiled, of course, since there's still no sign of the operation being performed. I've been prepared and rolled down to the basement seven times so far, and each time Professor Nyfenfork has looked into the innards of the day's chicken and shaken his head, no.

Choking Down, though! I expect the old place is very much the same as in my day. Vital work, of course. But such fun in the evenings.

Endless cups of tea. Grand chats. Board games. And trips to the local cinema. We'd march there, arm in arm, singing at the top of our lungs, our voices ringing out across the evening, setting the electric fence a-quiver with its own particular music. And a funeral almost every week.

"A squirt of lemon in the eye/Guaranteed to make make you cry"

The pancakes arrived, finally. I don't mind telling you that my hands shook as I tore open the envelope.

There's something about a girl in a tin helmet

I should be at home. What am I doing here, waiting for an operation that may never take place? I haven't seen hide nor hair of Professor Nyfenfork for over a week now.



The ground will be softening in the garden, preparing to yield up its treasures. Last year we were in the right place at the right time and managed to bring out two Hurricanes and a Spitfire. The former were old lead models, but the latter was life-sized and full of bullet holes.

The pilot we found on the edge of the lake some time afterwards. I don't mind telling you it took some talking to convince the poor sod that he was, in fact, dead.

There's a bullet in that sofa no surgeon has ever managed to extract.

There is an enemy within each of us, intoned the old gas mask man, lacing up his overshoes. I was so used to this little performance that even to call it from memory requires no effort at all. I can see him now-conjured- at the end of my bed.

He has just come back from shellacking the sunken gazebo, of course. And more than likely has stopped off to admire the view as he passed Stones on the way. He collects everything.

Or, at least, he did. But he'll always be alive to me. People would laugh at first, when he entered upon a party via the French windows, unannounced and unexpected, thinking, perhaps, that it was all a cod; one of their host's little jokes.

I'm thinking of a particular afternoon. Gin and tonics. Gramophone records. The whiff of sighing greenery from the conservatory. In he came. Did his dance.

Then fell to his knees before Kitty Smash (she was sitting on the old war settee). She took in the company with a circular look, inviting one and all to share her amusement. Which they did.

I remember she was wearing a purple satin affair that day. Full skirt. Very fetching, the way her underskirts held the dress slightly aloft as she sat there, smiling (even if her expression gradually gave way to something else) as the old gas mask man stuck the nozzle of his apparatus under her costume, and sniffed.

I know it sounds petty, but...

...I really must remember to complain about the size of the breakfasts in this place.

Met me tonight in dreamland

Has it really been six days? The band, of course, were marvellous. There wasn't a tune one could suggest that they didn't have at their fingertips. We lifted the roof of the big old hall alright. Dancing! Would you believe it! Hundreds wheeeling around while the band lit up the stage.

Fox-trot! Black-bottom! Shuffle-bob! Wincey-quiff! Oh, you should have been there. Many a comment was passed on the number of banjos fronting the ensemble. Three. Four. Seven, sometimes. Everything from tiny little banjolettes smaller than your hand to big bass banjos that fair obscured the player with their sheer size!

She was there, of course. I noticed her first as the ceiling fish-tanked with rippling light and my second falling-down cordial took hold. Hard to believe, at that moment, that this was happening at all; that the massed dancers and the colourful costumes could possibly exist. Hardest of all to comprehend, of course, was the notion that in fact, it didn't; that I was still in my bed in Saint Feasance's, rapt under the chemical ministrations of whatever it is in the syringe they jam into my arm each day.

Hang out the stars in Indiana

Wandering the corridors of Saint Feasance's again, mildly surprised to find a room full to the rafters with discarded bus stops, and another floor-to-ceilinged with park benches.

Interesting scratchings and scrapings on some of the benches, as well as names one doesn't hear anymore. I will investigate further at a later time.

My attention was then drawn to another door, behind the piled benches. Cobwebs and bolts gave way to curiosity and I found myself looking at a room completely full of railings, saucepans and scrap metal, collected I'm sure in some patriotic drive; the makings of a Spitfire, perhaps, that never flew. That might fly yet.

A comforting thought, that an old kettle might be so full of aeroplanes waiting to be born. But how to effect the birth?

What date is Christmas this year?

Just this thought, as the nurse bends over the bed, her overalls smelling fresh and her forage cap at a jaunty angle: What was the name of that bar, the one where the chaps who'd been too close to the blast sat out their afternoons? You know the one I mean. A bare-bones affair. Just the counter, about a half dozen chairs and two or three tables. I believe they had chess sets behind the bar for the asking, and a hoop board on the wall (but no hoops).

Dominoes was always a favourite game. I can picture the bandaged hands even now, carefully sliding tiles into place on the many-cornered snake of dotted tiles that was the sign of a good, hard-fought game.

Now that I think of it, some of the players had no eyes. Not entirely necessary, I suppose; anyone with fingertips can get the hang of a set of dominoes quickly enough. But what memories they must have had, to retain the whole game in their heads as it unfolded! Absolutely ace chaps; former navigators, many of them.

No doubt I'll think of the name of the place there later. The reason it came to mind was that it was there I met Bonnie. Bonnie from the aerodrome, with a smile like a sad song that played in my heart for the fortnight we had before she was demobilised. The sheets of her bed were white and cold. She had told me about the scars on her legs, but was nonetheless nervous when she removed her trousers. I sank to my knees and kissed her wounds, and she cried and stroked my hair. Then, in the morning, only this note: Forgive me.

Dry-lipped at the gates of heck

Operation postponed again. Something to do with fluids; a shortage thereof, or somesuch. But I have plenty of fluids, I joked. And they laughed, but not in such a way as to make me smile.

And surely doctors should take off their hats when they enter upon a patient?

We don't know where we're going 'til we're there

The walls of this place don't like me, confided the tea lady, by way of explaining her habit of walking a dead-straight course down the very centre of the corridors, equidistant from any and all nearby threat. I had come to look forward to the squeak-squeak approach of her urn trolley, making its slow progress towards the ward, with perhaps a jam tart on the second tier for me, on a little plate by itself. I wonder what they've done with her?

Wild blue yondering on seven shillings a day

Another broken night's sleep, interrupted and barged-in-upon by the noisy but unseen other patient in the hospital. He stamps around on his heels, this chap (I'm assuming he's a chap) and sometimes pauses outside the door of this ward, making a sort of tuneless sub-music with lips and teeth, halfway between a whistle and a series of gasps. Sometimes he stands out there while he consumess whatever food and drink he has found, wolfing and gulping, stuffing so much into his mouth at one time that breathing becomes a problem for him. It's as if he expects me to come out and save him from himself, with his groans and muttered "Oh, sweet gods". But when I call out to ask if he needs assistance, he just expostulates a bell-clear flatulette and stamps away.

But I mustn't grumble. The smell didn't hang upon the air too long, and the disturbance meant I was awake as dawn crept around the ward, lighting up its corners with its magic wand. Soon my cup of tea will arrive and soon thereafter my tiny boiled egg. I will joke with the nurse, as always, on the theme of tiny chickens in the basement providing such eggs. And she will smile, and tell me I'm a terrible man altogether.

Here's hoping there's a date on today's paper.

The music in the walls

Breakfast is served very early at Saint Feasance's. And what with information being so thin on the ground, it's only when I receive said meal that I know I shall not be opened that day. Today. They like a chap hungry when they cut him. Or her.

Strangely enough my slippers and dressing gown were returned to the bedside at some point and no one objects as I pad out into the sunlit corridors, whistling a tune I don't recognise and wondering if there's a newspaper kiosk in the lobby.
But some considerable expenditure of energy and shoe (well, slipper) leather finally draws one to the conclusion that this hospital does not, in fact, have a lobby. Nor a front door.

There is a note from Davison on the bedside locker when I return to the ward. Unfortunately I don't read it immediately, and by the time I decide to read it I have realised that, in fact there is no note. I imagined it. Silly me. Next time I will be quicker off the mark.

I relate this daft little trifle to the nurse who brings me my afternoon suppository and we both laugh.

Don't muck about with the moon

Lying here in Saint Feasance's, the straps on the bed tight but not uncomortably so, I am minded of a day- an afternoon; the sandwiches yet unwrapped- when I sat waiting on the banks of the Poddle, phrasing and rephrasing the words I hoped would catch and keep her when and if she passed the spot and I accidentally bumped into her (or she into me?)

I have her helmet now, and goggles. Somewhere.

Trying to remember the words of that old song they used to sing in the evenings at Woomera

Nothing to do but think; and when thinking fails, it's usually a freefall float into the past, where most of my life has been spent, and where the Tunnock's Teacake of opportunity sits forever wrapped in the tinfoil of desire.

Difficult now, of course, to even remember her name.