Overly interesting times

We've been shopping today, or trying to shop. I want a new winter coat. I've been approved for disability living allowance, and even got a back payment, so I can afford to buy myself a pressie. If I can find anything I like. What I would really choose to do, if I could, is send my old coat through a time machine and have it new again. It's excellent - lovely and warm, and so big it wraps around me twice - but I've had it for at least ten years, more like fifteen, the corduroy's all worn flat and the cuffs are frayed to shreds. Nothing lasts forever, try as you may.

But before we went shopping ... well, where do I even start?

I might as well pick up where I left off last Monday, when I said I did not have a good feeling about the week. How very right I was ...

Monday, in all fairness, was not too bad. Okay, it began with cat wee and a tax demand, but it continued with a call from a nice district nurse - one from another area, who made no fuss at all about the dressing change, I would've liked to have kept her - and a lovely long visit from my brother, who I hadn't seen for ages what with one thing and another, and ended up with a trip to Caro's (Judy's car still terrifyingly leaking coolant), for yummy food and cuddles with kittens. Cuddles with kittens, like Time, is a great healer. Are a great healer. Whatever. That sentence isn't going to work whatever I do to it.

Tuesday: our neighbour knocked on the door to ask if he could prune our tree a bit where it hangs over his wall. (It's a greengage tree, and the fruit is absolutely delicious - when it has fruit, and when we can reach it.) Yes, of course, I said, we'd been thinking about getting someone in to cut it back, but we couldn't really afford it. Oh, by the way, he said, did we know that our fence posts had rotted through, and the fence was very likely to blow over if we had a strong wind, taking Judy's greenhouse with it ...?

No, I did not know that. Huh. New fence. Wotthehell, it's only money. It grows, after all, on trees.

On the plus side, Mr Next Door is a builder, and Judy went round later, came to some arcane arrangement with him whereby he would handle the fence replacement, and came back waving a hairdressing flyer and with an appointment for me with Mrs Next Door. It turns out that the extension that Mr built a few months ago is not, as I'd assumed, a playroom for the kids, it's a teeny-tiny hairdressing salon for Mrs. And jolly lovely it is, too. Lucky Mrs.

The rest of Tuesday was chemo, which was singularly un-noteworthy, other than that there were a couple of different nurses on duty. One of them a man. Gasp! I've been going to chemo so long, I know all the nurses there, so that came as a bit of a shock. Not much of one. Just a bit. So: chemo; sleep. It's the way of the world.

I had meant to ask Judy to take me into Bicester on Wednesday to see if I could get my hair cut there - I had to get rid of the granny curls, they were driving me mad - but it was one of those post-chemo days when I could barely drag myself out of bed, so I was very glad that I only had to pop next door instead. Mrs did a lovely job and sent me home with a very fetching elfin cut. Alas that I do not have an elfin body to go with it, but such is life. Alas also that, without a professional's tender care, it becomes more reminiscent of TinTin. But we care not. Our mind is on Higher Matters. Well, no, our mind was mostly on going back to bed.

Later on, Judy phoned Lynn to find out whether she was still good to come and catsit over the weekend, since we were supposed to be going down to Bristol for my sister-in-law's surprise birthday party - only to discover that poor Lynn had food poisoning, which is nasty enough in its own right (don't I know it), and also screwed up her diabetes. So the whole catsitting question had to remain up in the air.

I don't think anything particularly disastrous happened on Thursday. Judy got up spectacularly early, took the car up to Aylesbury for servicing, came back with the world's ugliest courtesy car, and then we went and had lunch with Sabine at the garden centre (it is funny how heavily garden centres feature in middle-aged life). The saddest thing about that was all the yummy-looking cakes they had - the sort of cakes one could only dream of as a kid, when our mother's idea of a treat was a rock bun - which I couldn't even fancy. The sandwich I ate took its best shot at killing me as it was. Back to bed for me. This happens a lot.

Friday. Lynn was feeling well enough to come up, which meant we were all set for Bristol, so hurrah! on both counts. Foolishly, we relaxed for a few minutes ...

... just long enough for JennyCat to come home at eleven o'clock at night, slink upstairs without eating, which is most unlike her, and, when checked, turn out to have blood all over her mouth and be in a state of shock ...

As were we. Fortunately autopilot kicked in, and we phoned the out-of-hours vet (a £103 surcharge? Sure, that's no problem!) and rushed her round for a checkup. The vet looked her over and came to the conclusion that she'd hit her face somehow, had possibly fallen or been hit by something, and that she had a broken tooth that would have to come out. It'd be fine for the weekend though, she said, they'd have her in for surgery on Monday; could we just make sure she got a painkiller in the meantime ...?

Um, Lynn? You know how all you usually have to do is open and shut the back door and make sure there's food down ...

I am abusing ellipses like nobody's business. This must stop.

At this point I came to the conclusion that the Bristol trip was Cursed. First the car, then Lynn's tummy, now this. But Lynn assured us that she would be fine. And, as it turned out, she was. But I worried every moment that we were away.

I was stressing hugely about the Bristol thing as it was. My brother had put a lot of time and effort and expense into organising it, and I am very, very fond of my brother, and I was scared to death that something would go wrong. But nothing did. Judy and I had a hassle-free drive down, checked into a Premier Inn that was much nicer than the horrid Premier Inn in horrid Manchester a few months back (except that their rather strange idea of a twin room was a big double bed and what I think was a stripped-down sofa, or daybed, or a truckle bed or something. It was quite cosy, actually), got tarted up, insofar as that is possible, located assorted friends, found our way to Tim's house, and joined the throng. Tim had invited something like forty people - I didn't count them, but there were a lot - to the house, and then hired a bus to take everyone to a restaurant in Chipping Sodbury (there was no reason for that piece of detail, I just wanted to say 'Chipping Sodbury', because I am twelve) for a meal and entertainment by ZHL Strings, who are a collective of musicians that you have probably encountered if you've been to Covent Garden at any time; they usually play in the downstairs bit. Anyway, Michelle likes them, that's the point. So you see why I was stressed about things going wrong. But, as I said, they didn't. Judy and I stuck to the people we know: my sister and brother-in-law, who it was lovely to see, if people must live in Penzance what can you do? - and Sabine and her family (Simon, who is five, was vastly underimpressed by the band), and Gary and Linda, who were kind enough to give us a lift there and back so that I didn't have to wait for the bus to leave. And this is as good a place as any to plug The Poisonous Seed, which Linda wrote, which is a Victorian mystery that actually is Victorian (I have read so many historical novels that feature 20th century people in corsets), and which is excellent. There.

It was a very pleasant evening. I wasn't able to eat much - I didn't dare touch any of the canapes, delightful as they all looked (well, apart from the things that looked like poached eggs in a pastry tart, I didn't fancy those at all), and, once again, was left lamenting over CAKE, but what I did have was v good indeed. A+, would eat again.

All too soon I was flagging like a big wussy wet girl, so back to the hotel we went (thank you again, Gary and Linda), fell into bed, got up early-ish on Sunday and raced back home to find out how our poor JennyCat was doing, to say nothing of how Lynn was coping.

Lynn was coping capably, naturally, but the poor JennyCat was very quiet and sad and sorry for herself, and was mostly huddling in a corner behind the futon. I know just how she felt, I often feel like doing the same myself. The other two cats were none too happy either, being well aware that Something Was Not Right.

And so to Monday, when Jenny got taken into the vets to have her tooth taken out and a general check-up for anything else that might be lurking (nothing was), and I got to have my monthly chat with the consultant.

Who told me that my CA125 levels were up again, and that I might as well not bother with the sixth and final round of chemo (I'm going to have it anyway, though). And that, other than that and a scan at the end of it, they were going to give me a 'treatment break'.

I'd like my second opinion now, please. Otherwise my new coat, when I get it, may last another fifteen years, but I won't be around to see it.

And that would be sad. Would it not?

Like I said, nothing lasts forever. If you want me, I'll be behind the futon.