2007 — 2 August: where's my Guardian?

I don't know... just because Ms Postie is on strike today... And left us a note yesterday regarding a parcel for Christa that was too big for the letter box. I hardly know where to begin! How about, breakfast?1 I won't be having spam, having just cleaned out my In-box:

More than a hundred billion unwanted messages clog computer networks every day.

Michael Specter writing in the New Yorker

A reasonable night (for me) with good lumps of sleep either end, though She tells me there were five solid hours of wakeful bits in between for Her. The sun hardly seems to shine on some days, does it? And there's a couple of new meds in the morning cocktail for the next four days, too. Jump to it, David! Good, She's now (09:10) busily digesting everything except the morphine and the antibiotics from the other night and catching some more shut-eye. I shall type extra quietly for a bit and munch only gently.

The last 36 hours

It's now 11:20 and it's clear that recent events (including the ongoing bladder infection) have knocked the stuffing out of Her for the moment. (Last time round, remember, at the start of Cycle #1, and the Chemo drip, She was in hospital all along, of course.) So our apologies but Her energy levels and tiredness basically say She's not up for visitors, phone calls, or much by way of emailing, at the moment. Baby steps, people, baby steps. She says: "This is exhausting." I can only imagine.

But we both perked up when we heard via his website that ERNIE has smiled gently2 in our direction this month. And we've just watched and listened to nearly 30 geese (or ducks?) flying across in a ragged but tight formation. Wow!

Phone madness

I do wish people would stop treating our landline phone as a fax machine. I also wish they wouldn't program their damned auto-diallers to repeat the sin. See what I mean about the mixed blessing nature of technology? Must go: I'm off to visit an axolotl called Amadeus.

Amadeus the Axolotl

And help relocate his tank. Now that's one good-looking animal!

To cap it all, a steam "chuffer" chuffed past our little housing estate at tea-time today. My informant has just told me it was Tangmere — a Battle of Britain class light pacific locomotive built in 1947 and used on main and secondary lines in the south of England. There's another picture of Tangmere here.

  

Footnotes

1  Nobody in their right mind can possibly want to read about that. Not even to learn that the tiny flakes of grey whatever-it-is left at the bottom of the Tesco "Fruit & Fibre" cereal box yesterday when I shook them out essentially turned to concrete when the milk went on. Could be good to know for patio-renewal purposes I suppose.
2  He has essentially re-imbursed the cost of one cycle of Chemo drugs.