Strenuous Exercise

Part One:22/9/2019
I've spent the last month exercising my muscles. Well, some of my muscles….

When I broke my little finger at the end of July,  they put a couple of metal threads/wires/screws ( depending on who's talking about them) in the knuckle to hold it all together and they are due to be removed on Tuesday. I was given an exercise programme of extensive finger wiggling and told to stick to it faithfully. It doesn't seem to have made any difference at all but we'll see when I have the check up. I don't think Fagin would be impressed.

 I'll just be happy if I can knit and do some plain sewing (makes me sound like a Victorian maid).  I shall be just as useless at jigsaws as ever and my pastry making was never prize winning anyway, but it would be nice not to  fumble when fishing my travel card out of my pocket.  I've been going to the Hand en Pols man, he's one of a team of specialised physiotherapists and, as his title implies, seems to spend all day making people wave and wiggle their fingers and, astonishingly, it doesn't seem to have driven him mad.

 Meanwhile I've been glued to Netflix, library books and all the news about Brexit. I'll probably be stunted and boss-eyed by Christmas. I did manage to get to Amsterdam last week to meet Younger Daughter for lunch and a trip to Foam,the photography museum and their wonderful exhibition of Bressai's photos of Paris by night. Foam museum  Her boyfriend then cooked a delicious supper for us before I fled back north. Every time I wonder whether to renew my Museum Card or year's train card I think of days like this and know how much I'd miss them  There's an exhibition of Childhood in the 19th Century in the Teyler museum in Haarlem that looks fascinating,  for instance ….

Sitting on the balcony this morning, enjoying the sun, I  was amused to hear a fragment of conversation as two women wandered past, "She's a strange shape now she's 83..."  The mind boggles. I do hope I'm not exercising the wrong muscles?

Part Two: 29/9/2019
Well, so much for last week. When I went to have the metalwork taken out of my finger, the nurse told me it had been left in too long and would have to wait to be taken out by another surgeon ... in two days time. By now she was calling it 'pins'. Local anaesthetic, twenty minutes of digging by two surgeons and two nurses, three stitches and an impressive bandage later I can finally celebrate. ( The two pins were each 3 1/2 centimetres long, as thick as darning needles and are now in a plastic pot on my kitchen window ledge ready to impress family and friends) .

And I'm due back at the Hand en Pols man on Thurday.  This dratted pinkie seems to have become my new hobby