Oncologist out

Imagine feeling cared for, nursed, being someone special.  When you're waiting in a busy waiting room, in the oncology department of a big hospital, with no one to talk to, a nurse comes up to you, addresses you by name (almost right) and asks very nicely if she may weigh you.  Someone's paying you attention, aren't they?  They care whether you've put on weight or lost it and the nurse will pass the information to the doctor who knows that some anti-breast cancer drugs tend to make you put on weight, and the doctor will discuss that with you. 

But no, "that's just something the nurses do", explained the oncologist (B) I saw that time, saw just the once, never again.  The next time I came to the oncology department, I courteously though somewhat nervously refused to allow the nurse to weigh me.  She told the doctor - at least now I know that they communicate - and the doctor (C) talked about placebo treatment - visiting the doctor makes people feel better.  Yes, I understand that, having once visited my doctor anticipating our second baby, but wanting a home birth - he said he couldn't treat me because he didn't do home births, and I went home rather melancholy.  Being treated makes you feel good.

Nevertheless, last week when I went to the oncologist, I allowed the nurse to weigh me.  It amused me to note her complete lack of observation as I stood on the scales fully dressed and holding  two bags, one with a purse, a digital recorder, a camera, and a paper back book inside.  Needless to say, I weighed more than before. 

However, for the first time, I saw the same oncologist again.  This man (C) copes with me citing breast cancer research on predict, vitamin D, hyaluronic acid, aromatase inhibitors and that women diagnosed when over 60, gain less benefit from these drugs.  We had a discussion on the relative statistics of taking an aromatase inhibitor versus exercise (pdf), and he tells me not to stop taking the drug but that as far as the oncologists are concerned, I'm cured.  They removed the physical lump; they radiated the area in case they dropped anything; the aromatase inhibitor will prevent anything else starting up.  Keep up the annual mammograms, keep taking the aromatase inhibitor for five years (I can have a trial month out to see if the aches go away and if they do then they'll use a different aromatase inhibitor) but otherwise go away and don't come back. 

I'm cured.

Graduated daughter

Daughter has graduated with a good honours degree in maths with study in continental Europe.  Well done, grown up daughter.

Electronic memories

I saw some old friends in Paris a couple of weeks ago and asked to see photos of their children, but being octogenarians and frail, they don't do electronic, and they have no photos.  From a shared holiday, we have photos of us and their children in the 1970s, and of their mother, and of their father in 1968.  It bothered me to lose a similar memory, and I'm glad to see that, Gillian Rose, an Open University lecturer has brought this up as a problem to consider within the social sciences.

The Open University - Social Sciences

The Open University - Social Sciences Here is the Friday Thinker: Almost everyone owns at least a few family photographs, whether pasted into albums or saved on computer hard drives. Over the past decade, more and more of our photos have become digital. But has the shift to digital images changed what we do with our family snaps and how we feel about them? Why might this matter to social scientists?

A digital divide separates my old friends from visual and tangible memories of the last ten years.

A frog's arrival

After three years trying to get my tadpoles big enough to survive, each year losing some to too much sun, or stagnant water, at last I have a frog.

Stories of middle-aged women

"As a woman of 50, I’m surrounded by my contemporaries and what women of that age go through: parental loss, cancer, dealing with Alzheimer’s, children growing up. All these issues that are here in our lives and they’re invisible."

thus spake Samantha Bond recently, here, when bemoaning the lack of stories of middle-aged women.

Such am I.  I and my peers are coping with aging relatives, taking on legal powers of attorney, mourning those we are losing alive to Alzheimer's, and vicariously taking on the troubles of our grown-up children.  Our children may be living the dreams we once had: emigrating, studying fantastic university courses.  Or they may be worrying us with troubled relationships, dangerous driving, failing exams, not working. 

Is there not drama in such lives?  Apparently not, and hence Bond's moan.  There are few theatre, film or stage productions of the lives of people like me.  Despite the bulk of theatre audiences being made up of middle-aged women, despite the novels written by and for us, there are not the productions, and hence there are not the roles for the actresses like Bond. 

Middle-aged women are like the main supporting wall of a house, central and sustaining, but hidden.

Local jubilee

It's our Queen's jubilee. The United Kingdom is going red, white and blue today, a day to be proud of being English, or Welsh, or Scottish, or a member of the Commonwealth.  The whole country is having a big party.  In Aylesbury old town, we've already had our Jubilee lunch, shared between local residents and anyone who goes to one of the town centre churches. A child was giving out little plastic Union Jacks that make flapping clacking sounds, and the band 'God save the Queen' in a modern fashion.  Then a few minutes later, a black woman and I together waved our flags and sang it again to the traditional tune.
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us
God save the Queen

Our local politician tweeted when he & @marymaryb89 judged our neighbour Margaret's "as best decorated mobility scooter at #aylesbury #StMarys jubilee party!"
The atmosphere is wonderful. Despite the damp and drizzle, we're all happy and gay and proud of being part of the UK or the Commonwealth. Our Queen has been serving us for 60 years and we're all partying in celebration. Thank you to our Queen Elizabeth.

..........

...............................

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Half my myopia sorted: June 2012

My two eyes have very different focal lengths - is that the right term?  One is around -1/2 dioptre but the other is -4 dioptres.  This has advantages in that I can read very small print with one eye, like the ingredients on tins and the warnings on medical leaflets, and I can see well enough to drive with the other eye.  However, the disadvantages are that only one eye is working at a time, the two eyes are quite imbalanced and if I want to work on the computer and read a document at the same time (like when I'm marking OU assignments or copy-typing an historical diary) then I need to swap at least two pairs if not three pairs of glasses.  Vari-focals don't work because I have to throw my head back to see through the short sighted bit at the bottom and in the office everyone seems to fix their screens high up which makes the neck ache even more!

I had a problem that glasses didn't solve - exacerbated it even - and I was not going to go down the irreversible route of surgery.

But then I read of ortho-keratic lenses, discovered someone who could prescribe and fit them, and now have one lens that I wear every night in the very myopic eye.  It's wonderful.  In the morning, I look out of my bedroom window and can see into the distance with both eyes - I usen't to be able to do that.  When I sit at meetings, I can see the person at the end of the table and don't need to put on glasses to read the papers in front of me. It's wonderful.

But it's temporary.  If you don't like it, don't like wearing the lens at night, can't see well enough, you can go back to your body's choice of focus by simply no longer wearing the lens.  Or if you lose the b* lens, you go back.  And I dropped my lens the other night.  I heard it hit the wood of the dressing table, thought it had slipped between a piece of china and a tissue, but it simply disappeared.  I searched for 15 minutes before I was too tired and fed up to look any more and went to bed.  Husband and I searched in the morning, but it was not to be found, so I had to ring the optometrist and order a new one (£50).  In the meantime, my eye has been reverting to its normal -4 dioptres myopia and I can't see the detail of the blossom outside my bedroom window, nor the face of the person at the end of the table at yesterday's meeting.  The lens arrived today, and tomorrow I'll be able to see again as I want to.
2018: I found the missing lens! It had dropped into an open envelope propped up at the front of an open drawer of the dressing table.

Mothering Sunday titles

Step-daughter #2 earns a smile and brownie points for addressing a mother's day card to me like this. She appreciates how much work it is to stop people calling you Ms, or Mrs when your husband's surname isn't the same as the one you use and you've never told them to use Ms or Mrs so why do they think they should change your title to something they've not been told.

Maybe SD#2 'll get a doctorate too one day.

Hyaluronic Acid

Wandering round the local health food shop the assistants, whom I know because I'm often in there, asked me how I was. I had a little moan about the side effects of the aromatase inhibitor drug I have to take and then commented that my skin was also losing its elasticity, which it would do anyway at my age, but seems to have lost more quickly recently. The assistant recommended hyaluronic acid. This sounds wonderful - an anti-aging drug. But being as it's expensive, I thought I'd go and do some research on it first.

Googling just for hyaluronic acid tends to tell you about what it is, how it might work and some of its side effects but it wasn't until I searched for 'hyaluronic acid' and 'breast cancer' together that I got the scariest warning. Don't take hyaluronic acid if you have any cancer, but particularly if you have breast cancer. Hyalonic acid (HA) is recommended for creaky bones as well as for ageing skin - it seems to rejuvenate. BUT its ability to counter-act the side effects of Arimedix may be because it supports/ encourages breast cancer. There appears to be correlation between high HA and breast cancer - though cause is not yet proven. So I repeat:  

Don't take hyaluronic acid if you have any cancer, but particularly if you have breast cancer.

Crumbs and buns

Aged auntie has a support plan. Adult social care services review an old person's needs and sets up support to enable them to carry on living independently. Five years ago, I had nine octogenarian relatives but now only five of them stagger on. Those who died, died still living in their own homes, their own lives into their nineties, but aged auntie can't control her own life any more she forgets - like you all forget "what did I come in this room for?" but she forgets more and more often - like whether she's eaten today, or that she came into this room for her food, that anyone visited her this morning and even how to get home from the shops, and that is scary for her. She's not got Alzheimer's and she can still do the Telegraph cryptic cross word, so you can see how frustrating, demeaning and maddening it is for her to forget every day. If she forgets to eat, she dizzy. If she forgets her medicine, she's in trouble.

Recently, AA sat down with ASC, mental health services, two friends from the Saint Vincent de Paul Society and me and we all her eating, shopping, and other things. The SVP is an interesting organisation. Years ago, AA was an active member, visiting old people in their homes, care homes, sheltered housing or community centres, chatting with them, keeping them company, she threw them crumbs of company and solace, thus making a loved and respected member of her community.

Now her turn has come, and those who watched her as a role model, now watch for her and hence came the SVP members to her review meeting. These are people who deal practically with AA - what I can't do living 200 miles away, people who observe AA getting thinner, and when AA tells ASC that she does her own shopping, shake their heads, so ASC know the real story.
AA built up her relationship with these people years ago; now they respect and even love her. I cannot sing their praises enough. AA's breadcrumbs are floating back to her as currant buns.

Memories are made of stuff

This head scarf is the first present my father gave my mother circa 1947. Eventually she passed it to me with admonishments to look after it, that it was important.

These other photos are of stuff I found in Aged Auntie's flat.

'Stuff' sounds so deprecatory, as if of no importance. But to AA these things are what remind her. Her iron is a professional tailor's iron and extremely heavy and AA was a professional tailor. When I insisted that it had to go because having too much meant that stuff hid important things, she asked me where I'd be taking it. I ventured, 'an antique shop?' to be told that it wasn't an antique and that it was still used professionally and AA had a certain intelligent glint in her eye, so I remembered the Moroccan tailor in our town and said that I'd take it there.

Then AA looked at the old tools I'd pulled out. They were her father's tools. "Chop-chop", she remarked as she looked at his axe - another memory.

Memories are contained in stuff, stuff that brings back memories of other people, other times, lives lived and passed. Memories keep alive, and that's why you don't want to take away old people's stuff, because you take away their memories.

Two men and a car

Yesterday was an interesting day, not only because I spent most of it with two rather nice young men. What is a middle aged woman doing hanging out with two men in their twenties?

My son was searching for his first car and I was taken along as support and potential adviser - he flatters me because I've only once bought a car. Son's friend thought he knew something about cars, and indeed I was impressed that he turned up equipped for the adventure. His kit included:

• magna light
• plastic gloves
• i-phone

He used the light to peer at the car's dark places, under the bonnet, behind the boot, beneath the wheels. And his gloves kept his hands clean when he poked the wheels to find the brakes. This poking the brakes was helpful on the first car we looked at, a Ford Focus in Milton Keynes because he found a lip and suggested that the brakes might soon need to be replaced, and that comment initiated a conversation with the salesman who assured us that the cars his organisation sold did MOTs before they put them up for sale, so the brakes should be safe enough to pass the MOT - you assume. But the Ford Focus was a tad expensive, so we drove home to have some lunch and further perusal of car selling web sites before venturing out again to Luton, via Dunstable.

The Dunstable car site looked a bit dicey being a temporary office on an unmade up lot and the end of a very quiet road on a quiet industrial estate - we only found it because of the hand painted words on the gate-post "Car sales". We turned round and headed off for Luton.

Son's friend now used his smart phone to access Google map to get us to the Luton. Unfortunately, it wasn't a GPS that might have told us about the closed road and the detour and the detour took us down and up a local road with yellow lines each side and cars parked each side and on coming buses so driving life became a bit fraught. My car is on the small side, and if I see a space to pull in, I'll fit, but if on-coming bus decides to carry on on-coming then my car can't reach the space to pull in. I had to reverse down the main road until I reached a junction full of traffic and still no room for on-coming bully-bus. At this point, another driver suggested I reversed into a side-road on the right, which would have meant only two other cars would have to reverse. Fortunately, I realised that if I pulled onto the kerb on the right, then bus could squeeze between me and other parked cars - not sure why bus couldn't pull over more. Doing this meant that I couldn't get back out into the traffic stream until son's friend turned up sterling. He jumped out of the car, stopped the traffic to let me back into the flow and jumped back in. We decided that we weren't going to come home that route.

The delay meant it was nearly dusk by the time we arrived at the next car sales, a muddy lot tended by a bearded Muslim, with some others collecting and tipping barrels of sand into the muddy ruts. The car was a Nissan Almera and S'sF immediately noticed some damage to the rear bumper and a check revealed the car had been rear shunted. He peered at its engine - his torch now being essential as the light went, but every thing else seemed acceptable. Son, S'sF and Muslim salesman started negotiations over MOT, documents, price, means of payment, when to pay.

Suffice it to say, son has bought his first car and I expect to see more of him now he can drive over here without the hassle of a long slow bus journey at inconvenient hours. So maybe I won't have to drive him places again, but neither will I get the chance to drive his friends around too. End of another era, start of a new.

Learning when you're 60

It's a bit disturbing to a newly turned 60 year old to read that Brain function can start declining 'as early as age 45'

My first reaction was that they would get that result if they tested only on civil servants, British civil servants - which is a bit rude of me to imagine that civil servants might start losing brain function earlier than other working people. But then seriously, when I looked at the age cohort - 45-70 over ten years - I had to wonder if perhaps these people were stuck in the same job, still employed after ten years, so had no reason to use their brains, never learned anything new. If you're 55 say, and have secure employment and a pension to retire on at sixty, then what motivation do you have to learn new skills, memorise new material, practise something new, when you can carry on doing what you've been doing for perhaps thirty years. And if you don't use it, then you lose it.

If you haven't played netball for years, then do you imagine that you can still run around like you used to? If you haven't spoken French for years, then can you remember all the vocabulary you used to have? Is it then surprising that the muscles you used to use to play games no longer work? Is it surprising that you've forgotten how to learn a language? NO!

Five years ago I struggled to learn new moves in tae kwon do. Five years ago I struggled to understand new theories and concepts in business and social science. I struggled to write academic papers, and I struggled to make new physical patterns. I still struggle. BUT, I know that I can learn them. I realised this when I started to dance and found that some of the movements I'd practised at tae kwon do were transferable to dancing. Ergo, since I've done a lot of learning in the last five years, some of the academic skills I've learned must transfer to other contexts.

I recommend life-long learning.

New years' travelling plans

You don't want to spend a fortune on air tickets to another continent and then not stay for more than a couple of weeks. I have such a dilemma in that I haven't been to see my brother in the States for 16 years. I last went to visit brother and his wife in 1996 when they paid for us to spend Christmas with them after my husband had died in August. Christmas promised to be very bleak that year, and I was devastated, deep in mourning. Since brother & wife hadn't been able to fly over for the funeral, which would have been an utter waste of money to fly so far for a couple of days for the sake of someone dead, brother paid for daughter, son and me to fly to Vegas and to stay with them for three weeks. Son had three weeks holiday from his new school, and I just took daughter off for the last week of her school term without even asking permission.

I remember those weeks well, brother's very sensitive care for all of us, sister-in-law's welcome and companionship, and they kept us busy. They took us to visit the Vegas casinos (keep within the paths because we were with children), see the white lion, and the first time I saw Cirque du Soleil. I'd never heard of it then, but it was the most amazing circus, with no words, just acrobats, and clowns. They weren't nice clowns though. SiL told us that we weren't going to have seats near the front in case the clowns picked on us. And we watched one poor man following a clown who had his tickets and was showing him to his seat, along the aisle, along a row, over the back of some seats, along another row, over the back of some seats, then the clown tore up the tickets! The poor man was stranded.

But I haven't been to see brother & SiL since. They've come here several times, and
my son has visited them twice, but I've not been there. Mainly I've been engrossed in bringing up my children, first on my own, then I remarried, and have been building relationships with my new family, and husband had paid work too and didn't retire until 2008, by which time I was well into my PhD, so couldn't travel too much - except for that trip to India for the Navjote. I could travel to academic conferences for my studies, and even got the expenses covered, so I managed to get to a very eminent conference in Canada in 2010. This year I presented at a conference slightly closer to home, in Amsterdam. Now I have no academic affiliation that will support me at conferences, so I'll probably only go to a couple in Oxford, and might even gate-crash those, depending on how much they cost.

So I want to go and see brother & SiL in 2012. I've arranged my Open University tutoring so that I am free in September for two or three weeks, and husband's agreed to it, though he hasn't yet agreed to more than two weeks and we haven't yet booked our tickets. I expect we can do more than just stay with brother & SiL like I did last time, because now we don't have lots of children to look after. In 1996, SiL had three children and I had my two. I visited them earlier in 1988 when between us we had five children under school age, and we went nowhere but the supermarket, which was my excitement of the holiday - I'd never been in an American supermarket or anywhere in America for that matter. So my previous two trips to the States haven't been very good, and I've had little to entice me back, but this time husband and I might hire a car and go some other places too, like the Grand Canyon, or Zion National Park, and if we go in September, SiL says the temperature is good and we could go alpine hiking up Mt Charleston or visit their holiday hut.

Maybe husband and I will visit India in 2013, or I wonder when I could visit with daughter. When I was in India in 2008, I watched all those young women, and I missed my 17 year old daughter, and I watched them together and thought that she would get on with them. But daughter is finishing her first degree this year and may have a job without much leave in 2013, so she won't have the time to come with me. On the other hand, she loves linguistics, and has just spent a year studying maths in French in France before returning to Bristol to finish her maths degree, and is considering taking a masters in linguistics. At the moment she's looking at studying in Dublin or Wales, and she's job hunting. I wonder if she could study languages of India or linguistics in India. Then spending money to visit India with her in 2013 wouldn't seem like a waste of a fortune.

A Navjote in New Zealand

Brilliant! a Navjote in New Zealand.

My Indian girlfriend emailed me that her grandson had had his Navjote in New Zealand where his parents live because his father couldn't get long enough time off work to travel to India. So IGF and her husband have gone to New Zealand until next July. IGF's son posted the photos of the Navjote on Facebook.

The photos I like best are where there are lots and lots of children and my IGF looks like a matriarch there, happy and proud. I looked at how she'd arranged her sari because I'd just been explaining saris at Toastmasters, so I wanted to know how she was wearing it.

Enjoy New Zealand - how nice to be able to stay for several months, and watch and be involved in her grandsons' every day life so that she gets to know them and they know her.

Wearing a sari

Last week, my always exquisitely dressed girl friend, AEDGF, said that she was going to a party, that she wanted to wear some Indian dancing clothes and produced a sari. I don't think sarees are very easy to dance in, particularly when it's a western woman dancing, and then I discovered that she didn't know how to put one on. So I showed her, and then got her to practise. It wasn't an easy sari because it was nylon and kept slipping.

In 1976 my Indian girl friend (IGF) first showed my Australia nursing girl friend and me how to pleat the folds. Most English women don't know how to do that. I have the photos of us in the saree shop surrounded by the most beautiful colours, hues, sheens. I bought two sarees, a turquoise one and a pink one with oil painted decorations, and there's a photo of me wearing the pink one.

AEDGF rang me over the weekend because we were going to meet at Toastmasters on Monday evening. Toastmasters is a speech making club, where we practise making speeches, and it is very interesting because you hear 4 or 5 short speeches, around 7 minutes, in an evening, and they could be on all sorts of different topics. Yesterday, one chap wanted to practise vocal variety, and told us a tantalising tale of Jack Landon's, then my coaching girl friend wanted to practise a presentation she was going to give to some sports coaches, and someone else spoke about her holiday in Cuba, showing us a photo of her being kissed by a dolphin.

AEDGF hasn't got a long slip to wear under her sari and wanted me to bring her one that she could borrow. And then I had the idea that I could do a demonstration speech on 'How to put on a sari'. I dressed for the part in my turquoise sari, struggling into the choli, eventually managing to breathe because it's a bit tight. I put on rather a lot of makeup, packed the pink sari, its slip and choli and went to Toastmasters. You must imagine the looks when I arrived because although it is Christmas and we'd said that we'd dress up, the 'dressing up' was a bit quiet. AEDGF had a Christmasy hat on her head, and a gold shiny polo necked jumper, and chief toastmaster had a tie with Father Christmas faces on it, but I was the most dressed. A couple of the women said I looked stunning, so that was a good start for my speech.

I started by saying 'Namaste', and what I was going to do, which slightly worried the men because they thought they were going to be subject to a bit of a strip tease, but then I pulled out the pink saree, spread it over the floor so that they could see how long it was, and while I was doing that, AEDGF was pulling the pink underskirt on over her trousers. I didn't give her the choli. Then I put the pink sari on her, made her turn round to show everyone, showed people how the pallu at the back of my sari was a different pattern and how far it hung, and that I could pull it over my shoulders or head. I put it over AEDGF's head, told everyone how a sari made you look and feel beautiful, and finished with another 'Namaste'.

I hope my IGF'd have been proud that I remembered her lessons from so long ago. I got husband to take some photos of me in the turquoise sari, and perhaps I'll put them on Facebook, or even here. I realise there are different ways of wearing a sari, and I could look some up on youtube, but I'll stick to the way IGF showed me. Thank you. It's good to have her as a friend.

Your favourite colours

Someone recently asked me what my favourite colours are. But it depends where you are and what you're doing, if you're wearing the colours, or sitting in a room of colours for example.

Wearing colours - I wear blues, all shades of blues, and other colours only if they are blue tones. I wear turquoise, navy blue, royal blue, sky blue, lilac blue, lilac and purple. But is grape a blue grape or a red grape? I'll wear reds with a touch of blue, so crimson red works but not scarlet red. Some pinks work, but not peach or apricot because they've got too much yellow in them, and I'll never, ever wear orange.

Rooms of colour - I love the colour yellow. I may not wear it but I'd decorate every room in my house in yellow because it's so cheerful and bright. When I was a little girl, I knew blue was for Mary, and brown was for Saint Joseph, or that blue was for boys and pink was for girls. But I had a yellow mug and said that I liked yellow because it was the colour of the sun.

I like deep browns, but now I understand that brown is a colour of the seventies so I'm not allowed to have it. Well, I wouldn't wear it (not to mention that one of my school uniforms was a light brown), but I could have a yellow room, with a few dark brown oak pieces of furniture, couldn't I?

What are your favourite colours, and why?

Breast cancer women 'stop drugs'

** Breast cancer women 'stop drugs' **

"About a third of breast cancer patients stop taking medication because side-effects are more severe than they expect, researchers suggest"

says the BBC here.

I'm not surprised. Last time I saw a specialist doctor, he listened only to the first side effect that I mentioned, then he launched off into a spiel about the side-effects only being in the first three months, while I went through another side effect that minute. I watched him and thought perhaps after three months you just get so used to the side effects that you think them normal. But after reading this BBC article, I realise that you just don't bother telling the doctors because they aren't going to listen anyhow. If the doctors aren't going to listen, then you have to do your own thing to deal with the side-effects, and if that means stopping taking the drugs, then so be it.

I had an interesting email from Cancer Research UK about the causes of cancer that you can control, with a wonderful graphic that I recommend downloading and printing. In breast cancer, the fifth most important cause is inactivity, not something you might have accused me of. However, since I last saw that doctor, a new side effect has attacked me - creaky achy joints. I need supple joints so I can kick at tae kwon do, so a side effect that prevents me being active in order to prevent cancer is a very unhelpful side effect, to the point of being contradictory, and therefore the cause of the side effect should be avoided. The cause is the drugs so stop taking the drugs.

I'm a jam sandwich

Step daughter #3 gave me a hug, and her partner joined in. I felt like I was the jam in the sandwich and just as sweet.

Bowling together

Bowling together [1], not alone, demonstrates friendship, networks, and links.

My girlfriends, together with their partners or child in some cases, along with some very close members of my family went ten-pin bowling for my birthday. Some friends came from very close, being neighbours, and others from miles away, people I knew when our children were small, friends from the Open University, and friends from tae kwon do.

Unfortunately friends from belly dancing and toastmasters couldn't make it or we could have had some performances and speeches.

Husband made a wonderful cake - the best tasting he's made yet, and he bakes good cakes. He iced it with numbers

00111100

People gave me wine, flowers, smellies, chocolates and books, so I'm having a week of luxuriating in the bathroom. There's sparkling Saumur left to share if you have the time to come and visit me.

I don't know who gave me a dozen pink scented roses - they're beautiful. Thank you, friend.

---

[1] Putnam, R. D. (2000) Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon & Schuster, New York ; London.