Albina is back

 Albina is back from Poland, refreshed and happy. I met her off the plane in Terminal 5.She travelled club class, so she had already eaten and was well rested. I kept her up to date on a couple of things as we drove home and reminded her of her coming hospital appointments, as well as my cataract operation next Monday. As she had been with her cousin Hania, and her son Robert, she was exceptionally up to date on sport, full of admiration for the English and Saudi victories in Qatar and angry at the sluggush defensive display by Poland in the match against Mexico. Mind you, as soon as she had sorted out her correspondence over the last month and updated her medicine cabinet, she trotted off to bed reminding me to wake her at 8.30pm. Curiously, when she got up, she switched on the TV to watch the Belgium-Canada match. Albina watching football? You can see Hania's influence now. Wonder how long that will last.

In the meantime Brendan Walsh of The Tablet had shown some interest in my text on the plight of Poles in Belarus, and I shortened the text a little at his request and added some comments on the Vatican's embarassing silence on the crimes of Putin and Lukashenka. They still have this centuries' old dream in the Vatican of uniting the Churches, east and west. A pious lovely dream. But the East is now under the domination of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Russian Orthodox Church is part of the state, regardless of whether the state is Ivan the Terrible, or Stalin, or Putin. Even in Communist days, when the Soviet Union was the supreme embodiment of state atheism, the miserable patriarch in Moscow pretended to be a religious leader, but was actually part of the state apparatus. Somehow, so many Popes in turn, John XXIII, Paul VI and now Francis, did not seem to understand this. In pursuit of this empty dream they dither, they confabulate, they make earnest statements in favour of peace and dialogue, but they treat the oppressor and the oppressor on a par, where the only possible method of dialogue is the cudgel in the hand of the oppressor over the head of the oppressed. 

Also, I have had a run of bad luck with my nosebleeds. I spent 15 minutes trying to stop the flow at the office yesterday. I rushed to the loo to contain it there, but it continued unabated for far too long. When it finally stopped the room looked like a scene from a gangland execution. Feeling fine this morning I thought I would pop in to the gym at the Brentford Fountain before collecting Albina from the airport. Bad decision. The nosebleeds returned as soon as I had finished 15 minutes on the rowing machine and was just mounting the leg press. It lasted for an even longer period than at the office yesterday, and it was all quite embarassing. Blood was everywhere and I tried to contain it with my vest. When I finally picked up Albina I mentioned it to her. She then berated me for going to the gym the day after the first serious nosebleed. That sounded quite logical. I'm a bit of a chump there.

The interrogation did not stop there. When can I get the clinic to do something about it? What could I say?I have an appointment to see the Ear, Nose and Throat specialist at West Middlesex. Great! When? On Thursday 15th June 2023. That's seven months from now. There's the NHS in action. Words fail us both.