Mark has had a steroid injection into his knee.
He has had sore knees for years and years. Lately they have become so creaky and grindy that we have not been able to go for walks together any more. I have had to go on my own with the dogs.
Today he went to the doctor and had three injections into the side of his knee.
I did not go with him because I was still in bed, but I know where the injections were because the GP drew a large purple cross on his knee and it has got some puncture marks in the middle.
We had expected that he would be installing rural broadband today and so made a doctor’s appointment for really early in the morning so that he would not be late for work.
As it happened, Ted rang yesterday, and after some discussion they decided that they will not be working until tomorrow.
Instead we worked late last night in our taxis, and so when the GP’s appointment happened this morning we had only been in bed for a couple of hours.
I did not go with him. I did not think that he really needed moral support. Actually I did not think anything at all because of being foggy with sleep and mildly irritated by the alarm, so Mark got dressed and went by himself. He left the alarm on snooze by accident. This was not his finest marital hour.
He was not gone for very long, and when he came home he just crawled straight back into bed, so it was lunchtime before we woke up properly and I found out all about it.
The GP said that he was slim, which struck me as being completely unfair, because he has not been on any walks up the fell for ages, and he eats biscuits and cake with extra cream all the time. I do exercise and feel guilty about biscuits but the GP only ever scowls and grunts when I get on the scales.
It is difficult to know if the steroid injection has worked because the GP also gave him a large shot of painkiller, and that certainly worked.
I think that it has worked rather nicely. It is now very late at night, so the painkillers must have worn off, and he has hardly whinged about having a sore knee all day. Usually he limps and swears all the time, but today he has just carried on doing things for the whole day without a word of discomfort.
In fact he has been doing things to the conservatory.
He has really been doing things to it. It is beginning to happen.
He has put some plastic liner, and then some insulation, on the floor and has covered it all with more plastic liner. He is beginning to do some complicated thing now with planks on the top, I am not exactly sure what this is. It is where the underfloor heating will live, buried in sand.
I think that he is going to make the actual floor out of some timber that we acquired long ago, when the Air Force decided to demolish the cadet centre. There was a lot of wood in their skip, and we burned some of it, but Mark saved all of the biggest bits, underneath a sheet in the field. He thinks that there will be enough for a new floor. He has already brought some of it back and made a start.
I am glad about this. I like wooden floors, especially free ones.
It is not finished yet, because we are still waiting for some bits to arrive and because we have run out of time. In the end it was nearly bedtime and we have had to stop.
I do not think that I will have a conservatory for Christmas, but maybe by this time next year we will be revelling in middle-class almost-outdoor spaciness.
It is still very cold.
