Annual Review

This time last year the house was full of flowers and cards.  In the preceding four weeks a large chunk of my abdominal contents had made a great escape, courtesy of the surgeons at the ERI, I had been hit with a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, I had cut my hair, chosen a wig and had my first chemotherapy session.  It had been an emotional few weeks for the whole family, thrown into the early stages of a ride towards unknown territory.  Looking back on it now, from the distance of the first anniversary, it seems like a bad dream.   Just to remind me that it was all real, though, this orchid that I was given last autumn has come back into glorious flower.  So I think it’s time for me to look back over my year – and then forget about it.

I have recently read Lance Armstrong’s story Continue reading

Extreme reading No 2

I’ve just spotted this on The Fidra Blog, who in turn borrowed it from Steve Augarde’s blog.  Enjoy!

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 Steve Augarde, by the way, is author of the Various trilogy and, when I looked at his website, I realised he also wrote The Tractor Factory, Lifeboat to the Rescue and a number of other delightful books that I once knew off by heart.   As to my present reading, I rarely read books twice now that I’m past the stage of Katie Morag, Busytown, Burglar Bill and other such classics, all of which I could probably still recite if tested.   But I’ve just read It’s not about the bike by Lance Armstrong and I turned from the last page straight back to the first to read it again.  Perhaps it’s not the greatest literature but it struck the most enormous chord.  More about that in a future post, I hope.