20:39 
RB
11:35
Minor panic yesterday.
Bad night. Got up, realised that the tattoo was weeping. Had a good look. It appeared that the head, particularly the beak, had blistered. The fluid certainly looked like the fluid that you get in blisters. The texture of the tattoo itself looked and felt like blisters.
I had a bath, washed it thoroughly, stuck TCP on it. Then I went to see Bob, after panicking on the phone to Andy. Bob was actually pleased to see me, which was ever so nice. He was very busy, tattooing this woman's belly button with a ring of roses. He and his lady had a look and said it was healing nicely, put more savlon in it, it's just the way the skin moves.
Raven peered at it and told me that it would be fine if I didn't poke it. Feeling a bit better but not totally, I came home and did so. Raven had another look (while I was trying to look at it in the mirror, so you can imagine how silly that felt) and told me again that it would be fine if I didn't poke it and left it alone. It wasn't quite as itchy yesterday as it was the day before (although there were a couple of desperate moments) so that wasn't too hard.
This morning, though, the blistering seems to have dried up. I actually got a bit of sleep last night for the first time in around a week, which was nice.
The weather today is gorgeous. It's sunny, it has been snowing - everything outside looks crisp and white and beautiful. I should really be up at the stones but the car is still lacking an MOT. I'd also like to be out walking somewhere - again, the car is lacking an MOT. I'm not well enough right now to cycle 20 miles with walking kit, find somewhere to lock up the bike, then go hiking. I'd really like to do that 8 miler that Frood and I found at Uffington last year. That's quite a good walk, down past the gallops. I'm not sure what the weather is going to be like tomorrow. I suppose I could, if it was going to be good, take a train to Malvern and see Bling, but I don't think she's talking to me after we showed up nearly an hour late at Uffington last weekend.
That's my one issue with going car free this year. I'm a keen walker. My hobbies often require me to cart kit around, or other people. It's not so easy to get to the places I generally want to get to by public transport, and not all past times lend themselves to being car free. It's certainly something I'm going to have to think hard about.
It's very frustrating. Back home in Scotland there are loads of places you can go for a walk from the front door of the house. You don't need to go any distance at all to get away from the things I go for walks to get away from (Shakespeare ended sentences with prepositions - apparently it is only necessary to avoid doing so in the formal literary style, these days). Round here there isn't anywhere. The canal towpath just doesn't deliver the goods. Even Shotover is far enough away that I have to think about whether or not I could cycle there, and then there is nowhere to lock up the bike, and I couldn't cycle there wearing walking gear. There is no public transport to go out that way either.
I sometimes think that going car free with a bike is only really an option if your only hobby is also cycling. It's not that I don't enjoy cycling for fun - I do - but when one of your hobbies is hillwalking, another is sailing, and you also enjoy things like scuba-diving, transport quickly becomes an issue.
It might be time to think about getting in touch with the Oxford Ramblers, or whatever we have round here. I still have that Lawrence Main book, Walks In Mysterious Oxfordshire somewhere (that's a picture of Rollright on the cover). I could give that a look. I'm pretty sure that he avoids using the car whenever possible (but, if I recall correctly, is not averse to hitching rides with friends in order to get to some places).
Just feeling - wait for it - caged and restless. Again! I think it's mainly because I still can't go to the gym (it has been more than a week now and I'm getting really jittery, especially as I think I may have put a little weight on around the stomach area, which is certainly Not On). The tattoo hasn't healed enough yet. I'm also wary of getting it wet for as long as would be necessary to go swimming.
Besides. Got work to do. And I'm thinking of reworking the front page of my part of Ravenfamily. Make it marginally more interesting.
Thursday, January 25, 2001
14:38
RB.
The tattoo is incredibly itchy. Unbearably so. To the point of making me cry. It seems so strange that the pain of getting it done was nothing compared to the burning itch that I am experiencing now. I can't sleep. it is spoiling my appetite. I can't do any of the things I want to do because if the skin is stretched even slightly it hurts like it's going to split wide open.
I couldn't get a full back piece done. Not because of the pain, but because of the discomfort of the healing process.
It is starting to look and feel more like a proper scab now as well. Perhaps it isn't healing at warp speed. Perhaps it is healing at a snail's pace. Then I could have weeks more of this to look forward to. There's something with which to cheer myself up.
Can one end a sentence with a preposition if that preposition is part of a compound verb? I think I shall have to go check on that.
14:00
Insomnia is....
Staring at the clock at 4am, telling yourself "only 2 and a half more hours."
Being ready to kill the next person to make the tiniest noise.
Staying in bed because it is the done thing, not because it makes any difference.
Hating people who are able to sleep.
Hating people you love, because they are sleeping and you can't.
Having to deal with problems at your lowest ebb.
Crying for no reason.
Feeling guilty for not being able to "pull your weight" during the day.
Feeling furious with other people for complaining that they only get 4 hours sleep.
Watching your life fall apart because you are too tired to hold it together.
Feeling your body in a worse state each day than it was the previous night.
Seeing things few other people ever see.
Occasionally being confused about what has happened and what hasn't.
Not being able to make the people you love happy.
Wednesday, January 24, 2001
12:10
This is the photo which I used for the form of the above picture. If you click on the image the new window will show a full size version. As you can see, there's not a lot of resemblance. That's Frood pretending that he's about to get squashed. Does having the photo to compare with the picture make the picture more or less interesting? Does it make it better or worse? Hmmm?
I think it makes it more interesting, certainly when I come to muse upon how I got to one from the other, but I think it might make the technical failings of the picture rather more obvious as well.
00:20
I thought I'd add this piece. It's not really finished, it's just that I accept now that I'm not going to get any further with it as this stage. I still don't know enough about the software package (what the hell do all those cloner brushes actually do other than add bronzey blobs all over the place?) and I'm not expert enough with the pen. If I keep it sitting there and poking at it every now and again as I tend to do, then it will just get worse, not better.
Some of the bits are as I wanted them, although largely by luck rather than through any skill on my part, and there were some fortunate mistakes. Still. It's another picture.
Tuesday, January 23, 2001
17:47
Oxfordshire County Council reckons that there were no accidents at the Botley junction last year. Well I had four.
17:07
Something on Radio 4 caught my ear this morning. I think it was You and Yours and they were talking about the new communications system for the UK police which has just received approval and will be based on TETRA system.
Now, this is worrying. Because TETRA uses frequencies of 16-17Hz, which is around the same frequency as certain brain waves, primarily beta waves. In fact, this is the frequency that was apparently used by the military on the Greenham Common protesters.
Just do a quick search on Google for that and look at the results.
So not only do these things have effects on the human brain that have actually been documented, but they are high power. The suggested power of receivers that will be employed by the police will be enough probably to interfere with electronics such as pacemakers and goodness knows what. Do we really want our emergency services using devices that may well be capable of inducing hysteria and paranoia in sensitive individuals, and preventing critical electronics from working? What about if a policeman gets called to attend to someone with a pacemaker? "Excuse me, just have to call base, sir. I'll be about half a mile in that direction."
Most of the time fears about new technology don't worry me particularly. I find that people tend to react rather extremely to things they don't understand. As a scientist, I am well aware of this. However, as soon as I heard that this thing operates on the same frequency as brainwaves my entire spine went "No! Aaargh! What are they thinking??!"
I think I shall have to keep a close eye on this.
Oh, I had a bath, but didn't soak the tattoo. I did wash it with soap this time though, in an attempt to get all the old savlon off. The cotton wool I used with salt water afterwards did get quite grey. I let it air dry so I could have a good look at it and am a bit concerned because it looks very grey. I think this is just because the skin is sort of dry and nearly but not quite scabby, and once it heals properly that won't be the case any more.
14:25
The itchiness is almost unbearable now. The overwhelming urge is to have a really hot bath and soak in it. I haven't had a proper bath since I had the tattoo done. I've been having very shallow baths and using a sponge to get wet. The tattoo has been washed with warm or tepid salt water and cotton wool, then rinsed with lukewarm fresh water from the shower attachment.
What I really want to do is run a good, hot bath and soak the tattoo in it. That would stop it itching. It's interfering with what little sleep I get.
I used a slightly hotter salt wash last night, and for the first time since I first washed it I started seeing black bits coming off on the cotton wool. Knowing that there will still be ink left on the surface because I've been hat gentle with it, I'm not too worried. I just wish that it would heal enough for me to be able to get back to the gym. I might try some pilates today. The weather is dismal.
More nightmares. Some pretty bad ones. I feel almost hungover today they were so vicious last night. I was stuck in bed with them all morning, my body producing so much of that stuff that keeps you from acting out your dreams (glycine? Or was my medulla working overtime?) that I had to use a pair of pliers to open the carton of milk for my first cup of tea. I nearly had a heart attack when I caught sight of my face in the mirror when I was washing my eye. Red-rimmed eyes, pale and haunted, hair black as pitch.
I feel dreadful.
I'm not even sure I can tell my dreams. It's not that I don't remember them, it's just that they don't make a whole lot of sense. I don't often do this, but for the first time in a while, I've had to just scribble down keywords while my head tries to make sense of what it remembers.
16:53
RB
14:46
In other news Andy came over on Saturday for a birthday outing (his, not mine), and in the evening we watched this pretty good film called The Ninth Gate. I just nearly wet myself because I discovered that the Internet Movie Database recommends that you try The Crow if you liked this movie.
It's a pretty good film. If you can imagine a cross between Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Stigmata, Black Books and Foucault's Pendulum (wow, that's being reprinted?) then you might just about get there. Johnny Depp was as good as always, and it was very understated, which I like in a film. It wasn't as understated as Ghost Dog, which is so subtle it could almost be a Luc Besson film, but it is still well worth a look. I don't think that the ending leaves too much to the imagination, either. I think it's just right. Anything explicit they did would have ruined it, I think.
We went to Wayland's Smithy, by the way. I must fill out a report for the Site Damage Database.
Here's a thing. This is a fairly decent page on shielding philosophy (I'd like to know when it was written, actually). It's not a "how to" and it's not particularly patronising or detailed. But look at the spelling! "Magiqual"??? What sort of spelling is that? Good grief. That sort of deliberate avoidance of anything mundane to the point of being ridiculous just pisses me off. It's like people spelling "Celtic" as "Keltic" or the various IRC kiddies' attempts to fit perfectly decent words into 9 characters then adopting them as their day-to-day net names. Urgh.
People who use the word "shaman" without understanding what it means. People who use the words "witch", "wiccan" and "pagan" interchangeably. People who think that "totem" means the same thing as "power animal" or "spirit guide". Gah! Gaaah!!!!
We finally saw Contact for the first time last night as well, when it was as part of Channel 5's UFO night. It wasn't nearly as bad as I'd heard, although it was rather twee, and a bit barfy and obvious. John Hurt was his usual dude-ish self. I thought the end was very telling, where she was left with this experience that had, apparently, no external evidence to back it up. Of course there was external evidence, but people were trying to keep it quiet. I won't tell you what it was, in case you haven't seen it yet and want to. Shades of Sneakers with their blind guy, though. I kept expecting people to start calling him "Whistler".
I thought she was very good, at the end, when she was forced, as a scientist, to admit that no, she didn't have any objective evidence for what she said had happened. But, despite Occam's Razor, neither could she sit there and say that it didn't happen, because she had experienced it and it had affected her profoundly. I sympathised with that a great deal. Well worth a look, although not like the book, from what I remember of the book.
13:54
A bit of my tattoo scab just came off while I was washing it. It is itchy now, a painful itch. The sort that you don't scratch because you know it will be painful to do so, no matter how itchy it actually feels. I scar very easily, I'm very, very worried that it won't come out very well. However both Andy and Frood have said that it is looking remarkably good and seems to be healing at warp speed. Of course, I am pampering it.
Like I said, this isn't body art. I can't say I am happy about having this tattoo. I have a fierce pride that I have been asked to carry this mark. In that sense I am happy, but I didn't get it done because I "felt like it". I was actually quite reluctant. But I also had this sense of honour at being asked to do this for Raven. Now, now that it's done, I am pampering it, but this is partially because of this fierce pride. Can you imagine having a father whom you loved dearly, and defacing an image of him? Not to pamper this tattoo would almost feel like I was dishonouring Raven, and I can't do that.
It's interesting. This mark, this image, will be there when I am old and wrinkly. When I am 80, and possibly past all this nonsense, I will still have this black bird on my back. My entire stance on my philosophy is one of acceptance rather than belief, for all that Andy says that this makes me vulnerable to temporary breezes and ripples in the flow. I have already spent some time without Raven, when he went away and didn't come near me, didn't speak to me, for some months. What if he should go away again, this time a long enough period that I come to decide that he was never there? How will I feel about having his image under my skin then?
I don't think I will ever regret it. No matter what happens. It is a physical memory, in a way.
I hope the scab is supposed to be coming off now.
I mailed Raven Publishing yesterday about the total costs for their two books on learning NW design with shipping to the UK. The very nice Mr Lange replied to tell me that postal charges have just gone up but he'll get in touch with the Post Office and let me know. I really want those books. I've started having flashes of art works again, and that hasn't happened for a long time. Most of them look to me like I will need A1 sugar paper in various colours and an awful lot of oil pastels. There is one that is an image of a hunting wolf pack in a twilight forest, but they are not entirely lifelike representations - parts of them are done in the Haida style. Highlights, shadows, the curve of a muscle, a glint in the eye picked out with the forms of the NW coast.
I'd like to do these pictures, but one other thing the tattoo taught me is how wary I am of cultural misappropriation. At one point I thought my tattoo might be a traditional Kwakiutl or Haida design. I fell in love with the NW styles more than 10 years ago. As I thought about it more carefully, however, I realised that I couldn't use that style. NW Coast art has implications and culture that were not part of the image I wanted to wear, and which I had no right to. I am not part of Raven Clan, forbidden to marry of Raven Clan, having to marry of Eagle Clan. My lineage is not matrilinear - I did not get sent to my mother's clan when I was of an age to be trained as a warrior. I do not consider Orca to be my crest, my totem. I consider Orca to be my Uncle (and a rather scary one at that!)
Although, if I can afford it, I will most likely buy these books, and use them, I am vaguely uncomfortable about copying an art style that has so much culture associated with it, and whose people suffered so greatly.