Two and a half days as John Merrick

LITTLE politics in this entry as I've just returned home from Carlisle Hospital after spending two and a half days in Willow Ward.

It all started on Monday after I had posted a story on the BNP website and updated this blog. The turf for the back lawn arrived and as it was a warm and windy day the chap delivering it said that I should get it down ASAP and give it a good watering, which is exactly what I did.

I finished at lunch time and went in to have a bath when in the mirror I noticed that I had a lump on my lip. When I took my boxers off it also looked as though a midge or something had been trapped in them because there were bites all over my groin area.

I felt OK and worked on Freedom all afternoon and although a rash was starting to appear on my body, four of us went to Workington to hear Nick Griffin speak.

It was a brilliant meeting with Nick at his very best. He had just come down from Carlisle where he had spoken earlier in the evening, and an audience of around sixty gave him an enthusiastic welcome when he arrived at around 9.00pm. Nick just answered questions from the floor and what he had said was summed up by an Independent councillor at the front of the queue for the Gents an hour later. "That's something we don't hear very often today - a politician talking common sense."

After his speech, Tina said that one of my eyes was closing and by the time we were back home it has closed completely and had a big drooping swollen bag of skin beneath it. The same happened to my other eye and my lips were trebled in size. I was really worried by now and with my body completely covered in raised red blotches and the roof of my mouth swollen, Tina ran me to the A&E at Carlisle around midnight.

I was admitted immediately and had various things pumped into me and over the next two days had numerous tests taken to find out what had happened.

But as often happens with these sort of things it seems we might never know. Obviously I was allergic to something. Favourite bet is that I was bitten by an insect. Or it might have been some treatment put on the turf, or some of the topsoil I bought might have had something deposited in it.

Anyway, I'm home now and this blog and replying to emails is all I feel up to for the moment. I did feel rough and it didn't help when the nurses kept saying I looked like John Hurt in the Elephant Man.

Carlisle Hospital looked very clean and was ultra efficient and I was sent home with a bagful of drugs and creams to keep me on the mend until I go back next week.

Nick Griffin: An impressive performance in Workington.