I was all sick and unhappy today, but on the other hand, I got a bunch of books from the library on Sunday, including a number of books about Iran – would you believe, with all this shit going down in Iran that is all over the news all the time and everyone is fighting for their freedom, and on Saturday I received from the lovely Colleen a copy of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (hooray! It sounds just like one of Barbara Michaels’ books, with the spooky past and everything!), and today, oh heaven, I received from PaperbackSwap the second volume of Joan Wyndham’s diaries, Love is Blue. Which I am just heading off to cover with contact paper and so protect forever, but I just wanted to remark that Joan Wyndham charms me just as much as ever, and if there were fifty volumes of her diaries I would buy and read them all.
She walks in a very sexy way, leaning back from the hips as if offering herself to some invisible lover. She once told Oscar that her whole body was one vast erogenous zone. We looked this up, and are very jealous.
Typically I got mumps halfway through my last week of training. I’d been feeling feverish for days, but put it down to the excitement. Then my face swelled up like a balloon and I was hauled off to the isolation hospital. Sister was a dragon, she came charging down the ward, doing a running commentary – you could hear her coming from afar. ‘Good morning, Lieutenant, had your bowels open? Don’t pick your nails, Eileen. What’s this I hear about your refusing the bedpan, Wyndham?’
I love her so much. Why is she dead? It’s totally not fair.