Forming the words

"I'm sorry to say that I've now got the results of the biopsy back, and it's been confirmed that I have bowel cancer. I'm going to need major surgery ( and perhaps some radiotherapy) early next year but the tests have only found one small tumour which hasn't invaded any other organs and it's in a very operable position. The prognosis is very good indeed for both the operation and a full recovery"

I just needed to work the words out - which J and I did last night.

Still trying to get to grips with the meaning of them.

This site is really helpful for that. But only a bit at a time. Some of the paths still frighten me.

I like Mr Bain my consultant. A straight talker. And the staff at the Washington Hospital ( where I'll have all my treatment) are a great mix of kindness and unobtrusive professionalism.

And whatever the sedative they gave me was, I can recommend it. Makes you just forget . So great to spend time with permission to be slow and stupid. So my clearest memories of yesterday are of mince pies, "Ocean's 11 " and " About A Boy " on DVD, and a walk late at night in the frosty halfmoonness. I'm sure there was something else...

As well as helping with my speechwriting, mince pies and being there when I stumbled in the dark ( and so much more) J pointed out where the line " original air-blue gown" comes from.

A Thomas Hardy poem - The Voice. (Thom and I go way back. I even won a prize being him in A Dead Poets Competition ):

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.