"We are bemused and crazed creatures, strangers to our true selves, to one another, and to the spiritual and material world --"

"-- mad, even, from an ideal standpoint we can glimpse but not adopt."

The irony of it all does not escape me! I look for a quote about being bemused and the quote I find, courtesy of R.D. Laing, has me feeling more bemused than ever.

(R.D. Laing - British psychiatrist noted for his alternative approach to the treatment of schizophrenia - and for making me feel more bemused on Monday mornings)

My original bemusement was caused by the fact that, for a full hour, I hadn't felt any pain. I'm not wishing to dwell on my health, which I'm sure has become very tedious for everyone, not least me...

...HOWEVER, my body was saying to my brain, 'Something's up, mate! I'm not used to feeling like this. It is WEIRD.' and it took my brain quite a long time to catch up. (How quickly one becomes accustomed to a certain state of affairs...)

It wasn't until the pain came back, just to remind me how it's been for the last eleven days, that I realised...

More irony...

 Most people, when they're ill, can't go to work. Instead they sit down. My work IS sitting down (writing at the computer)  I can't do that. Instead, I walk about.

Dolce far niente

and, by way of translation, just in case...

That was the plan, yesterday, at any rate.

Sometimes, my body plays dreadful tricks on me. A trapped nerve in my back (don't ask me how I managed it. I have no idea) which bizarrely migrated around to the front as well, meant that I couldn't sit or lie comfortably in any position. All I could do was walk about. The pain got so bad that the out of hours doctor suspected kidney stones...

In hospital until late last night. Now it's concluded that it's several things coinciding by chance, all completely unrelated. Unrelated except for the fact that they are all in my body at the same time.

So I did nothing, but it was by no means sweet.

 Today I'm hoping for the sweetness!

“Valour is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.”

Michel de Montaigne, French philosopher,1533-1592, said this. So, I'm guessing, not many skiing holidays then.

No, he doesn't look much like a skier really, but he DOES look as though he has an awful lot of brains. He could have written the quote about valour just for me today.

Our hotel is at the top of a mountain pass. Lovely except at the end of a day's skiing when, in order to get back to it, you have to catch a lift right up the mountain then ski down The Most Horrendous Route Of Death to get to another lift that goes back to the hotel.

The Most Horrendous Route Of Death at the beginning of the day when my legs aren't tired...fine. At the end of a long day...not fine.

Not sure exactly how many times I fell over. One time, I crashed badly and slid down the hill. I couldn't stop and took out Geoffrey below me who sat on my face (and smashed my goggles) As Elliot said afterwards, in another culture that would mean we were most certainly married.

I made it down and, more remarkably, managed to do it without bursting into tears through fear, pain and exhaustion.

It really is a case of what's going on in your head more than how you're getting down the hill.

Yeah, skiing is such good fun!