Well, OK (cliche alert), after all the talk about exercising and generally being sensible, it’s time to walk the walk. My steps tended today to the local gym, where I did a cautious and pretty light workout. Nothing on the lower body, not wanting to stir those mets up! So just 15 minutes on the recumbent bike, then a few upper body exercises. Walking there and back, plus the three loads of washing which I hung out earlier, have added up to 5,883 steps, about 4.5 kilometres. (Strangely, although I have just been sitting here typing, the Fitbit just buzzed, and it has gone up to 6,000 steps. Whatevs!) I even hopped on the scales at the gym, and got a pleasant surprise. I had been about 92 kilos, and am now 87. I knew I had lost weight since the operation, the appetite having mostly gone missing, but when this started to return, I thought I had put the weight all back on.

It definitely has been an indulgent few weeks, making jam, marmalade and banana bread, and discovering the delights of French champagne. Shopping in the liquor department, I thought “What the hell” and got a few bottles of Mumms. Well, what a great drop. Steely and minerally, plenty of bead, and a flavour that keeps going for the whole bottle. It drinks very well the next day too. (I really must get a proper bottle sealer.) The Piper Heidsieck isn’t bad either, although I still prefer the Mumms. My beloved innocently mentioned that she would like to try a Krug. I did a quick online search and thought “Yes, it’s really quite expensive”. However, in a different liquor shop they had it for $70 or $80 more! I mentioned I had seen it elsewhere for less, they checked and said “We can price match that”, so I got one of those and another couple of Mumms. The Krug is a pretty extraordinary drink; huge mouth-filling flavour, fine bead, and you can definitely keep swilling it down. A friend came over for lunch yesterday, and we got through the bottle, no problems. Fortunately, I didn’t think it was five times as good as the Mumms. They both leave your mouth in much better shape than the Aussie sparkling wines, even the “traditional method” ones, which leave me feeling quite dried out. Maybe the French ones don’t have so much sulphur dioxide; perhaps they use better material. Anyway, I am going to restrict myself to a bottle of Mumms each month, and a Krug as an annual treat.

To round out the miscellany, I came across a really polemical piece by Elizabeth Wurtzel in The Guardian, I have cancer. Don’t tell me you’re sorry. (Apologies if this link doesn’t work. When I put in a link at the end of a sentence, I always leave a gap between the URL and the full stop. If I do that here, however, WordPress tries to make all the following text part of the URL as well. Here is the whole link if the inline version doesn’t resolve: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/20/cancer-elizabeth-wurtzel?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail . I tested it and it works for me; email or leave a comment if you strike problems.)

I’ll let you read the piece before I post my reactions to it. I look forward to emails or comments. I haven’t quite worked out what I think of it yet. But it is quite an incendiary piece of writing.