Stuck

Last night was less worse than recent ones with three hours awake and seven hours asleep. The soporific effect of today's meds wasn't as pronounced to start with. It wasn't quite as hot and humid and that makes a difference. The nostril wound continues to heal slowly. I suppose the beta blocker med stabilises the blood pressure and reduces blood leakage, but the side effects are troubling, including the heart skipping a beat which hasn't happened quite so noticeably before. My leaky aortic valve is normally quiet and has rarely drawn attention to itself until I started on the latest medication.

America and Iran have paused exchanges of fire in the Straight of Hormuz to make room for diplomatic moves. Oman, with coastline in the Straight and an interest in negotiations about safe passage for maritime traffic, has taken the initiative in discussions about managing sea traffic. Iran laid sea mines in the Straight to assert control over traffic lanes, but with the loss of much of its navy is not in a position to manage them. A tanker attempting transit without Iranian authorisation has been blown up by a mine, but this could have been accidental, as the minefield isn't properly managed. It depends on who is telling the story. The Americans continue to embargo Iranian shipping to put pressure on negotiations. The stalemate continues.

Clare cooked Saturday breakfast pancakes, with the added pleasure of strawberry jam she made yesterday. She left me to cook fish for lunch while she went shopping in town. By the time she returned my head was foggy as is often the case before I've eaten, but it didn't clear up and drowsiness took hold of me and stayed with me all afternoon. I don't know why, and don't know what to do with myself. It really impairs my ability to carry on with routine life. 

I made an effort to concentrate on transcribing a couple of pages of my Ulster travel diary. I began doing this starting from an optical character recognition of a scanned page, but it wasn't accurate enough to be useful. The original typescript version proved more effective to work from. I could have done a text to speech version with the android phone app, but it's totally locked into an American AI boosted version of what it computes you're saying. Annoyingly useless.

I waited until mid afternoon to go out for a short walk and again as the sun was setting, altogether half my usual daily distance. My legs were stiff and I felt as if I was sleep walking. On my way to bed before sunset.