Before producing a flower for the Wildcat, I regret that once again, for the benefit of the Loyal Four (progress!) and colleagues who claim to be missing me, I must tidy up last night's hasty summary of developments regarding the Condition.
Yesterday was devoted mainly, like Monday, to the arduous business of sorting out a comprehensive timetable for the battery of further medical tests I must take. This feat has now been accomplished.
Even if all goes well, I no longer see myself back at the factory before mid-October. I'd hoped to be done with the tests inside a fortnight, while blog-hero Yang reckons that once we have a diagnosis and treatment can start, it'll take two to three weeks to get me in shape for AFP.
He expressed that cautiously as "the time it might take for you to become sufficiently not tired to resume work there."
One of the main examinations, a set of X-rays, won't happen before September 25, since Dr de P (the specialist Vincent of occasional entries) would like it to be done by one man and no other, at the Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou.
I discovered yesterday that there is a switchboard in France more incompetent even than that of AFP at certain times of day. It's at the Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière, where the operator managed to give me three different wrong services.
That was after rudely asking "Who sent you?" and "Why?", but the latter she must have regretted. I was unsparing in my determination to talk to the right people.
Had I not imposed a temporary ban on scatological matters, I would tell you the full story -- since the Wildcat enjoyed part of it and I know Tony will want details -- of a delightful afternoon spent in part at the Hôpital Saint-Joseph.
Only one person there left the biological analysis lab in disgust during the conversation forced upon me by a zealous and pleasant nurse. She brought me some large tubs which had once contained cream cheese, then paused:
"These might not be big enough."
"If you like," I answered. "I can buy some more buckets.
"And I promise you, over four days I can give you any colour and consistency you may wish for. Would you prefer the mostly liquid variety or something rather more solid when I can manage it?"
The big "if" in that timetable obviously lies in the diagnosis, once done, since there's no way of knowing what it will be and what treatment will be required. But, though the tests look far and wide, we're back with the hypothesis that it's Crohn's or some similar disease.
 On to more elevated matter: I thank the Wildcat for an introduction to a supermodel turned artist. And I offer her a rose by another name.
She revealed to me a side of Carla Bruni which I'd never come across. Last month, RFI made 'Quelqu'un m'a dit' (Amazon Fr) one of its CDs of the week and added to an interesting pile of interviews.
Of the music, I've still only heard extracts on the Web, but I'm grateful to the Wildcat for drawing my ears to a woman who has disclosed some of what lies behind appearances in a record certainly remarkable for its poetry and, as best I can judge, performed with considerable talent and discretion.
The eglantine pictured here comes from Colorado, and it's Cheryl Netter I'll be thanking for it as well as a reminder of a famous appearance in Shakespeare.
Closer to home, a French person I know only as Gourdeau, since a whole site is being reconstructed, tells us that the bloom itself could easily be confused with the purple flowering rasperry (rubus odoratus), until you look at the leaves.
I will refrain from adding anything about raspberries in this neck of the woods, since the last words should go to William:
"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight..."
from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'
6:22:14 PM link 
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Eyes right for Austria's abominable Arnie. Unmasked.
The chap who follows (below) is from Len Wiseman's '
The magnificent seven will be unleashed in Paris on October 3, a week after 'Underworld' here.
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