while you get ready to vote tomorrow

think about this - I had a cataract removed from my right eye this morning - they take off the lens (le cristallin) and replace it with an artificial silicon one.  It took about three hours from arrival at the clinic, with the operation itself taking about 15 minutes under local anaesthetic.  No pain and a lovely light show to watch. Slightly high on the pure oxygen I was breathing, which sadly has now worn off.  I was sent home with advice not to take important decisions this afternoon.  So that's the invasion of Burma put off for another day then.  I had to wait eleven days from diagnosis to procedure.  This is what I look like now, but only until tomorrow when this dressing comes off.  If I ever leave France I shall come back here for any health procedures I might need or want. The little bloke who wheeled me from the recovery room to the room I had for the duration mentioned tomorrow's election once he had established where I was from (my accent is a bit of a giveaway, I cannot seem to lose it, and I think I sound to a French person the equivalent of how Antoine de Caunes used to sound on British TV  years ago.  If you get my drift).  Bloke then started reeling off the names of post-World War II British prime ministers, better than most Brits could do, and said it was going to be a close-run thing and that the LibDems were going to be nowhere.  He said he was very interested in British political history and had a lot of books about it at home.  Did the heart good.

Incidentally, when you go into a French hospital for any kind of procedure you have to have not one but two showers, including hair and all bodily orifices (helpful diagrams on the wall) with a powerful disinfectant stuff called Betadine that makes your nose run.  If you are in bed while there no visitor is allowed to touch the bed.  There is no such thing as MRSA in French hospitals.  Do you think these things are connected?

Oh and the breakfast they gave me afterwards was very good indeed.