Well, here we all are, shaken and stirred, made it through another one. (I just noticed how slack I'm getting with my punctuation and grammar, though as I wrote that it occurred to me that a punctuation mark is meant to help convey meaning with clarity and a full stop would separate the elements of my first sentence too much - they run into each other but there is a beat between. Semi colon is just too fucking formal, feels pedantic, I mean, who fucking cares that much? Not even me any more.) (Yes, I am freshly post-spliff, thanks for noticing, and using all these byways to avoid getting to the point - now I don't need the other half of the brackets, in fact I'd like to open another one to say I can see I'm still avoiding the issue, spewing out a few more words of waffle to not say that YD has been waiting to have a lump examined to see if it was benign. For too long. Too long for any of us, but hey ho, she was seen this morning and it's nothing, some hormonal blah blah tissue blah blah, didn't take it all in, but not life-threatening in any shape or form.

Because, you know, my maternal grandparents outlived all three of their children, who all died as young adults. My mother (1955) from asthma which led to pneumonia which led to heart failure. My aunt (early 1960s) from what were later discovered to be side effects from the very first contraceptive pills. My uncle (later 1960s) from undiagnosed internal bleeding after a car crash. So I know these things can happen. I've been kind of frozen, holding tight to stop my thoughts heading into a future which will get here soon enough if it's coming, and it might not be, as indeed it wasn't. And obviously, you can't, or I can't, control thoughts to that extent - they sneak off to the only thing that really matters the moment the latest distraction starts to pale.

So now I'm going for a fag and to watch a bit of rubbish telly (Dave Gorman - not really rubbish as such, but undemanding) and will be back in a bit.

But now I'm too tired for any more shenanigans and I'm off to my bed.

I am grateful for: living on the coast; distractions; the NHS, weakened, perhaps fatally, but still delivering free health care with grace and respect; photos; friends

xxxxx