The moment I wake up...

... before I put on my make up...

I said in the comments of my last post that the next one will be more uplifting, and - in a strange sort of way - I believe it will be.

Tonight I went into my local pub (nothing new there) to meet the man who lent me the entire box-set of the 'Deadwood' series that I have been banging on about for a while now. My intention was to lend him some DVDs in return, and this I did.

His mother (who is 75 - no great age) is in big trouble at our local hospital, with a blood disease that is so rare, that all the young doctors come to take a peek at her, just in case they never have the opportunity to do so again in their careers. It sounds as though she will not make it for much longer, and is about to be moved to a hospice where many of my good friends have died - though I did point out to my friend, you are not obliged to die, just because you are admitted to a charitable hospice. Most do though.

The two girls in the photo are my most favourite barmaids ever, and - were it not that I am older than both their fathers (though not as a combined sum) - I would be most happy to give them a good seeing-to if they could see their way to turning a blind eye.

Happily, my previously voiced concerns over losing inhibitions have not - as yet - become reality, so I sort of treat them as if they are surrogate children, and try to play up to the wicked but benign uncle they never seemed to have. In any event, the one on the right is now with child, and I have been trying to persuade her to name the baby after me (Cecil) if it should turn out to be a boy.

However, 'the one on the right's' mother is in the same ward as my aforementioned friend, because she too has a rare disease which will (if all else fails) lead to a bone-marrow transplant with material she had the fore-sight to cryogenically store before the onset of the full symptoms.

I talked to her lovely dad tonight, and he is struggling along without her, trying to balance a job with the visits he pays to his beloved wife. She is battling on, with the added motive of surviving, if only to hold her first grand-child. Nobody is heart-broken yet.

I had a text message from the dear girl on the right tonight, saying that she views me as 'family', and that meant so much to me, that I quite forgot the little ailments that I regaled you all with this morning. Doesn't this stuff put it all into perspective?

I may pull down this post sometime tomorrow (though none of them follow me here), so if you really do want to say a little prayer, then please say it for these folk, who knock my minor inconveniences into the cocked hat of proverb.