frankbarnard.com

So, the serious work has started. I’m five thousand words into a story that will probably take 180,000 to tell, encouraged by a positive reaction to the lengthy synopsis from Martin Fletcher, my editor at Headline. I’ve never worked to such a detailed, self-created brief before and it certainly helps, though other stuff happens along the way. My only concern at the moment is to do with health.
My PSA is still being checked on a three-monthly basis and I’m waiting to hear the results of the latest. And just to help matters, I fell out of a sailing dinghy a few weeks ago and got whacked across the side of the head by the boom as the boat turned over. At first the injury seemed restricted to a deep gash on my right ear, but then I began to experience black blobs floating across the vision of my right eye. This grew worse after a long drive, so now I’m having that investigated too. Something to do with vitreous gel, the jelly-like fluid that fills the inside of the eye, pulling away from the back wall of the eye and casting shadows, an age thing but possibly worsened by the thump to the nut. I keep thinking the blobs are flies. When some actually turn out to be flies it’s confusing. But perhaps the most worrying moment came when the specialist asked: ‘ Have you had a blow to the head recently?’ Christ, you, think, he’s taking this seriously.
It’s been quite a year; a big crash at Silverstone, towed in from Rye Bay by the lifeboat and now a slapstick moment in a dinghy that could turn out to have more serious results than any motor-racing shunt I ever experienced. Amazing, when I pause to think about it, that I’ve reached 71.
On the positive side, the writing is as absorbing as ever and when I’m back in 1940, as I am at present, and preparing to take off from Manston to meet the Luftwaffe bomber fleets, what’s a few black blobs between friends? As long as they don’t turn out to be Messerschmitt Bf 109s…