I have gotten a little behind with everything this week and I have a truly valid reason. I’ve been as sick as a pike. And not just with the usual stuff, although that has been horrendous too, but I’ve been smitten with a foul and purulent entity on my body that caused me to miss out my Substack posts on Monday and Wednesday.

So look, rather than having to explain everything all over again, how about I just put the Substack post I wrote yesterday, detailing it all, on here for you to read.

Yes, I know it’s a cop out but if you will just have a glance at this then I think you will permit me this one extravagance. Seriously, it’s been that bad.

Anyway, without further ado, check this out…

From Substack: 27^th June 2024

I was struggling for a title for this post. My initial thoughts were “Abscess Makes the Heart Grow Fonder” or perhaps “Come To the Boil” or even “Cyst-ematic!” At one stage I even contemplated “Simon and Carbuncle!” In the end I’ve gone for What’s New Pus-sy Cat? And that’s because I’m currently having a bit of an issue with pus.

I know, I know, gross isn’t it? But it’s a fact of life that from time to time most of us will need a bit of lancing at some point in our lives. And right now, I’ve had a go at it.

I have an abscess on my back the size of the Isle of Wight and it’s making me feel extremely poorly. That’s the reason why I failed to post on Monday and Wednesday; I was feeling just too damned ill.

Like all idiots I tried to lance the seething, glistening, pulsating thing myself and did manage to get some gunk out of it. My beautiful better half also attempted in a less aggressive fashion and got some more out of it using a combination of tea tree oil and hot water. But with every attempt we just seemed to make the thing angrier and angrier and now it’s reached the stage where it resembles a 1:1 scale model of Ayres Rock and I had to seek urgent medical attention.

I didn’t know that our local surgery had an Advanced Practice Nurse but I made an appointment to see her on Monday morning. She was very good and I could see the pity in her eyes as she tended to this poor, old, pus-filled man who had crept into her consulting room like a grotesque and hellish vision of corruption and diseased flesh. I was hoping that perhaps she might have a crack at lancing it herself but no, it had gone way beyond that; the situation called for medication. Strong, powerful medication. Arse-kicking medication.

So I’m now on Flux… floxi… flummox…

…antibiotics.

And they’re having a positive effect already after only 48 hours. I’m much more comfortable to the point where I feel well enough to write and catch up with my Substack and other things. Mind you, I don’t want to get one stuck in my throat; they’re like trying to swallow rugby balls.

I’ve no idea how this thing first came to be either. It just appeared one day and has grown like a well-manured marrow ever since. At first I thought that it might be a bad insect bite as I am terribly prone to having mozzies and horseflies sink their filthy little teeth into me every Summer. But that’s another story. And how does one get an abscess in the first place? I do not know.

Anyway, I’m on the mend now and hopefully can get back to some sort of normality.

Oh! I’ve just thought of another title – Sir Lanced-a-lot! Which, in hindsight, might have been better.

(sigh…)

So there you go. It’s all been rather unpleasant here at Blessham Hall this week, be assured of that. The good news is that the abscess has reduced greatly in size to where it’s more molehill than mountain and I’ve not had any adverse reactions to the medication.

Phew!

I’ll be back with a proper blog post next week.

Thank you for your patience.

In the meantime you can read and subscribe (for free) to my Substack HERE