a study in emerald

The meeting today was shorter than expected, and did definitely increase my knowledge about the cross-mapping process (between clinical coding systems), but was not, shall we say, the world's most interesting of meetings. My scribbled notes were full of marginal notation about current writing projects. I must cultivate more illegible handwriting.

I must also get down to more serious research rather than being distracted by these new Shadowrun books I have. Noir they may be, but they are not the right period or quite the right concept.

I was rereading my copy of A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman earlier today, and yet again admiring how well it was done. I remember the first time I read it, and my sudden surprise and sheer delight as I realised exactly who the protagonists and antagonists were. It was just so perfectly done. Of course, it's never quite the same when you reread it, but it's still very good.

I've been working in the NHS for more than 10 years now. It feels weird to think about it.

---

The Stare's Nest By My Window

The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned.
Yet no clear fact to be discerned:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war:
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare,
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

-- W. B. Yeats