what a day

Well, check up day today and all the usual sensations when returning to the Christie. Mostly now I don't think about last year (except for the extraordinary rush of writing about it on my earlier blogs, must retrieve them but don't know how) but walking the corridors there brings the slow shuffle with the drip stand and the bag right to the edge of my memory. I turn away from it.

I explain some slightly odd symptons and the doctor examines me. "I'm pretty sure everything is ok" he says. "We'll do another scan just to be sure. I am practically certain there is no recurrence but we will check."

He is about to retire from the Christie but will continue to work at a private hospital. I have medical insurance through work. Would I like to transfer to someone else here or come to the other place? I like this man. He has a calm, kind face and is reassuring without patronising. I feel he sees something of me as well as the patient. "I'll come to you" I say. They will send me a date for the new scan.

We drive away and Ian drops me so I can get a bus into the city. He is going into work. I must not be pissed off about having a scan. It is the right thing to do and the only way of getting complete reassurance. As I sit on the bus I give myself a little mental shake and realise that the person sitting next to me if shifting away slightly. Whoops! it was a physical shake too.

I am having my hair cut and going shopping to fill the rest of the day rather than going back to work. These days I am only ever in the city when I go to work. Otherwise I am home which is where I want to be but definitely no shops. I hate window shopping and shopping as relaxation but I quite like a blast of shopping in a short space of time.

My usual hairdresser is busy but I was so determined to make this day have useful stuff in it that I have booked to see another girl, small and sweet and younger than Nicola who is practically a friend as well. This means I come out with shorter and blonder hair than usual but what the hell. I never look like me when I go to the hairdresser anyway because my drying skills are nonexistent and they produce a smooth and glossy look which I never repeat. My hair really wants to kink and bend and go its own way.

After the hairdresser I go for lunch in Waterstones, and then go to buy a beautiful pale blue and white linen dress (yes, yes, I know, last time I bought linen I said never again but it is just lovely and far too expensive and sod it, when I put it on it moves around my legs in a way that reminds me of me).

I talk to my sister and we plot a girlie night away. She and her partner with five children between them live on the edge of Dartmoor and time to herself just doesn't happen. I suspect she would kill for the night to myself I blogged about the other day. We will meet in the middle of the country somewhere and drink white wine and talk all night.

Ian and I drive home together and arrive with the evening light vivid and gold on the other side of the valley against a granite sky. We live here. Will we ever take it for granted? We walk around the garden, check the greenhouse, walk through the field to inspect the new trees. Everything is now in leaf except the whitebeam. Does anyone know if they leaf late? It doesn't look dead, with swollen buds but still resolutely bare.

Tomorrow it is down to Oswestry to collect the eggs for hatching to produce our Welsomers. Isn't life good?