Ricardo, Sonny, I missed you guys!

Trapped in the apartment until I recover from the surgery, I immediately invest in a digital set top freeview receiver, which allows me access to about seventeen more channels (puny by American standards I know). This allows me to reacquaint myself with a lot of re-runs from the 80’s and beyond, and one of my all time favourite shows is being aired after sixteen years in some dark cupboard. Miami Vice brings back fond memories of another life I lived so many years ago, so far away. A life of condos, Corvettes, ties as thin as the moustaches, and Maserati driving Columbians with permed hair and chests and fingers dripping in too much ill-gotten gold (another scary story). I lap it up and am lost in the nostalgia.

Ten days after being discharged I’m having my twenty staples being removed by a nurse in my doctor’s surgery. This is nasty, and is very similar to removing normal staples from cardboard except the nurse has to break through scab and overlapping skin to get under them and a grip. Not pleasant, and I excuse myself from time to time to squeal like a pig. Cue Deliverance reference.

A couple of days later Francesca’s mum flies back to Rome. Despite the usual anti-mother-in-law jokes this is not ideal. Francesca needs as much help as possible, and Ann is a bit like a ‘fish out of water’ with the kids.

A few days later I attend St. Georges hospital again. This time it’s for an electroencephalogram. TQ, my friend from work is happy to take me there, and cheerfully sits through my ordeal of having my scalp glued to a net of tiny electrode like objects. After bombarding me with ‘up close and personal’ strobe lighting for what seems like an eternity, and being subjected to the usual rave music and Star Trek Borg references the technician ‘unhooks’ me from the machine and TQ and I leave via our waiting squad cube.