The Gene of an Idea.

This week has been a rough one. Indeed, the past two weeks have been rough in general. After making a surprise return to hospital, I've since suffered a rather brutal dental proceedure, a scary turn for the worst invoving an infected IV line, three changes of anti-biotics and technical difficulties that for the time being have brought my laptop to its knees. My laptop that happened to contain the freshly finished draft of my Cover to Cover blog of The Fountain Society.

So yes, in all this hasn't been a fun ride and unsurprisingly this page has suffered. Ideas are flowing like dry mud and the energy to write them up just hasn't been there. I suppose a break wouldn't be the worst thing in the world considering everything I laid out above, but it seems a shame to let this fall by the wayside when I managed to keep on top of it the last six weeks I was in here, and also there's the future to consider. If I let it drop now, when do I pick it back up? When I'm out? When I'm fully recovered? No, I don't want to present myself with the excuse to fall into laziness once I get home, and with that in mind a stroke of inspiration hit me the other day.

While I've been in here I've been picking up copies of Warhammer Visions from the newsagents downstairs. For those who don't know, it's a new coffee table style magazine that is packed from cover to cover with pretty pictures of Games Workshop products. I wouldn't usually touch it, I'm out of the Warhammer game and the magazine itself is as expensive as the figures, but I'm in hospital. I get bored. It breaks the day up. Inside last month's issue they ran a feature on a Tyranid army painted in gloss black with yellow highlights. It was so simple but so gorgeous. I'd never seen solid black Nids before, which is baffling when you consider the entire army is just the alien from Alien wearing various different exoskeletons. But it looked so right, so blindingly obvious, that I knew I had to try it.

I knew I had some genestealers from an old Space Hulk set lying around at home, so when I was on day release yesterday I dug them out. I was kind of dismayed to see I'd already put most of them together, and teenage me had made an utter mess of most of them, but I did find a good couple to experiment on. I knew I couldn't really start yesterday, being the victim of Count Cannula and all, but I also knew I wanted to make sure that when I was ready - I was going to do this. So I undercoated him.

And now he lives with me in the hospital, and everytime I'm feeling low, out of energy or like I'll never recover and this will never end, I can look over and be reminded that when I do get out - I have stuff to do. I have a life to live. And even though it doesn't always seem it now, there's more to life than these four walls and the people within them. One day I'll be out and painting. I'll be out and writing. I'll be out, getting on with my life and pursuing the things I love and care about like everyone else. It's funny what can motivate us, what can inspire us and I already expect most of the nurses to see my little friend and make faces at him, wonder what kind of stupid things I'm into and why I'd bring such a horrible thing onto the ward. But for me, he's important, and as long as I remember what he represents, the world can go swing.

Plus, y'know, he does kinda brighten up the place in his own way...