Not so bad after all

Yesterday saw me back at the Borders General Hospital to have my foot checked out. Turns out I may have interdigital neuroma and possibly something else going on too, but all this is actually good news because it's treatable, which I'm mightily relieved about. I have to have an ultrasound to check it out for a 'this is it' and then it's things in shoes and maybe an injection or two to see if that works. Final thing is surgery, but I'm not going there until all other things have been ruled out. Looks like I won't be able to go on the trek I was planning to Bhutan this year though (which was my ambition) but maybe next year if all works out.

Just as I was coming out from my appointment I switched my phone on and found an email from the Human Rights Consortium.

I had sent a poem off to them in May (closing date 15th May) and was told they'd be coming to conclusions about which poems they wanted very soon after the closing date. I hadn't heard anything until yesterday.

The email started 'Thank you very much for submitting your poem to our recent call for submissions for a human rights-themed poetry anthology.' Okay, I thought, well that's that then.

Then I read on, 'We are delighted to let you know that, having read over 600 submissions, we would very much wish to include your poem ‘Kora in Lhasa’ in the anthology.'

I was so freaked out I drove home telling myself I must've misread it. I got home, turned the computer on and no... that's exactly what it said. I phoned the very sensible Denise, my poetry critiquer, and read it to her. She was excited... I was excited... and that was that. My poem really has been accepted.

What's also quite brilliant is, not only does my poem get into the anthology, but I get invited to the Bloomsbury Festival in London in October, which just happens to be when I was thinking of going to Bhutan... so the fact I can't go on the trek has suddenly turned out to be not such a bad thing after all.