Something afoot

Change of plan today, as I went to bed with a gym twinge in my foot which quickly morphed into a painful attack of gout. I have avoided beef for a couple of years and have avoided gout. The large real beef burger I ate a couple of days ago may have been be the trigger. Unable to walk in the morning and having had no sleep since midnight, had to phone mum first thing to bump the day I had intended to spend with her in London. Recent article in the Guardian about gout and how it is one of the last medical conditions that people feel free to laugh about.    

I spent the day shunning work, instead read a novel called Stoner by John Williams (click through for Julian Barnes writing about this). I'd not read a novel clean through in one day for many years. Stoner is a wonderful book, but the story about an unremarkable university professor is persistently sad and quietly ghastly. It had been a previously obscure work which has suddenly been picked up and become a word of mouth success. This finished I started a book First Matie lent me called Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M Auel. But I find her prose annoyingly cluttered and laborious in contrast to the spare faultless prose of Stoner.

Happily the orc foot abated and I could walk about by the end of the day. Lorraine home and looked after me, which is nicely weird. Watched a new sitcom House of Fools with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, which was puerile, rude and surreal. I absolutely loved it.

Below comedy heroes Vic and Bob.