After an unnerving time this morning coping with a sudden, unexpected and inexplicable burst of sharp pain from my new wound, I felt like I'd just survived a car crash, tingling with adrenalin and then feeling drained. This kind of pain must resemble that experienced by torture victims, though not comparable when you think of the cruelty and malice of the perpetrators. It's something I have thought about a lot recently.
After lunch I had a bereavement visit to make just a short walk from home, for a funeral two days after Christmas. It's a tough time for the family, but when we talked about the service, it was clear they were deriving much consolation from remembering the years of life shared together. It's ever a privilege to be entrusted to tell a departed husband and father's story. It's bound to be tough for them.
Later, I visited the surgery again, for another GP check on my condition. They are as troubled as I am about recent developments, and insistent on making sure that an infection doesn't creep in, even though I have started my fourth course of antibiotics. I've been booked in for another check-up on Christmas Eve. Brilliant.
There was another Lucy Worsley historical re-enactment programme on BBC Four tonight. This one re-visited the wedding of Queen Victoria and Albert, scrutinising every aspect of its planning and execution, as it was a prototype of the grand scale Royal Wedding as public event, against which all others have been measured since then. We learned about the cuisine, and the seating arrangements at the service in the Chapel Royal at St James' Palace and the banquet which followed. All al these things were apparently planned carefully by the Queen to make a series of bold defining statements to her family, entourage and subjects about the modernising reign she envisaged with Albert at her side. She was a remarkable young woman in so many respects.
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