Shingles and the Spring Tide

22 February 2018

Saturday at the Hibs Aberdeen game at Easter Road I mentioned to my wife that I thought my new glasses weren’t right as I had slightly blurred vision in my left eye.Sunday my forehead felt like I’d had petrol dabbed on my skin. Monday the tear duct under my left eye was slightly swollen. Tuesday swollen more, the eye was sore and a rash on my left forehead.Yesterday the rash had risen,lower eye lid swollen and the eye ball felt like I’d been punched out. I thought it might have been something to do with vape fluid and went to doctors surgery. It took less than 2 minutes to be diagnosed with shingles!

Thankfully I had a mild dose of chickenpox as a kid but as shingles can pass on that virus to kids and people with weak immune systems I have been grounded. I don’t feel too bad although I may need a ‘Phantom of the Opera’ mask to go out in public soon and am now on a course of anti virals with my friendly doctor confident as it has been caught early stages.

The big downer is that I was supposed to be in London on Friday to appear on a live BBC ‘Old Grey Whistle Test’ special with Bob Harris. Flights and hotels had been booked and I was to meet my daughter for dinner and take her to the studio. I had to call to cancel on doctor’s advice as I could have passed on chickenpox to vulnerable people I would inevitably have come in contact with.Bummer all round!

It’s not too serious and In the grand scheme of recent ailments it’s literally an itch and I have to keep an eye on how it progresses. Two to four weeks for it to pass and I can keep on working here in the Studio cave as long as I have a bell to warn visitors.

Steve Vantsis went back South on Tuesday leaving me with my work cut out. We have quite a few ideas in place and I can start building lyrics over the next few weeks so that next session we can start stitching things together and expanding the writing.

I have a new Heath Allen SQ6 mixing desk on it’s way from Audio Technica that should arrive early March in time for the next sessions and Steve and I can start working with live sounds and other muso inputs. It’s going to be exciting tying these into the KEF monitors and having a fully working control room again.

All the remasters released so far plus a list of other titles are all ready to go up for digital downloading and I have acquiesced to my catalogue being available for worldwide streaming after convincing discussions with my new aggregator.It should all be up and available in the next couple of weeks.

The festivals are all in place, the Autumn tour is nearly signed off, the greenhouse design is approved and build should be underway in the next 3 weeks, the beds are prepared, seed ready to go into propogators, the sun is shining and the days longer with the frost a less frequent visitor.Energy levels are registering a bit higher and this current minor health setback will pass quickly.The Spring has most definitely sprung.