The adventures of Miss Despina

I dreamt up most of this post whilst lying in bed, listening to Jez’s mp3 player, with a cold wet camomile teabag on my left eye. This is not some strange heath or beauty craze I’ve latched onto - although it is a very lovely sensation, admittedly. No, the fact is, the skin under my left eye has swollen to disgusting proportions, leaving me with the world’s sexiest stye which looks and feels fit to explode at any given moment. The worst thing is that inside the lower lid, there is a sore scratching my eyeball every time I sodding well blink!

I spent an hour in the eye doctor’s yesterday - by some chance I had my passport and NHS card, a huge chance as I never carry those! After a brief examination (which confirmed only what I knew already - that I’m very long-sighted, my left eye is slightly astigmatised and weaker than my right one at the best of times) I was sent upstairs with a prescription comprising four items. Shit, I thought, this will be so expensive! The prescription contains antibiotic eye-drops, ointment, B and C vitamins, and camomile teabags. And it was 122 Czech crowns, which is about 3 quid or 4 and a bit euros. (I sincerely hope none of my Czech friends ever need a precription when they come to the UK.)

But no-one had told me:

• how long the swelling would take to go down
• how long or how often I should apply the cream / take the tablets for
• whether or not my head will fall off as a result of this extreme trauma.

Yes, Despina is overdramatising. But it is bloody horrible though!

Jez spent his last afternoon in Prague sleeping by my side, having lugged my baggage from our nice apartment in the far north-west of the city, to my dingy room in Fawlty Towers, the far south east of Prague, in an area known as "the forest"! No-one could be nicer than him. He told me that he rather liked the smell of camomile tea, and why didn’t I just daub teabags on myself in the morning instead of using perfume? - This to the girl who will return to the house and be five minutes late for the bus if she realises she’s gone out without her perfume! - I said that if I wiped my legs with teabags I’d have a bit of a fake tan too. In fact why not just paint eyeliner up my calves and pretend I’m wearing stockings? (Ok Despi, enough of your love of stockings!)

We won’t discuss the airport, you can imagine the scene. Two people who love each other very much and who won’t see each other for 6 weeks. I returned "home", and listened to the mp3 he had loaded up for me with many wonderful songs that we both love - there is everything on there! I lay in my bed and stroked the space on the pillow where he had been, and smiled up at the photo of him on Buda castle in April. As always, his smile warmed my heart.

Now I’m going home, to put teabags on my face. More fragments of Despina and Jez’s crazy life coming as soon as I can blog with 2 eyes, I promise!