First the news — we saw Dr P this morning, and the PSA remains undetectable. (This has been the score the last few times (with minor variations in 100ths of a per cent). Today’s consult was followed by a Zolodex appointment; the latter was scheduled half an hour afterwards. Dr P was running a tad behind, so after the consult I legged it off to the oncology unit at Epworth Box Hill for the implant. That was delivered uneventfully. (I had had a little bleeding from the previous one, which was unusual. There were no problems today, though. The implant is only about the size of a grain of rice, so it is not a big thing to put in.)  

After that we had a coffee — takeaway of course — drunk back in the car. Then we headed off to Mitcham, where my beloved wanted to check the size of a pair of shoes she had bought on Thursday. It was good that she did, as she ended up getting a half size bigger than those she had been sold previously. Finalising the transaction took some doing — there were complications. She had purchased two pairs on Thursday, one of which she took with her, the second to be mailed to us later. Much checking was required to distinguish the pair being returned from the pair being sent! (We will have to return this pair to the store for a refund — whenever they arrive.) We had gotten a discount on the price of the pair she had bought on Thursday, and this was duly applied also to the pair bought this morning. Of course the sales assistant we had today was not the one who had done the transaction last Thursday. Etcetera. Anyway, after trying on several further pairs, the slightly-too-small ones were “swapped out” (as people like to say) for the correctly sized pair. We thankfully headed for home after our voyage around the ‘burbs of outer eastern Melbourne. When large areas of the globe were still undiscovered, early cartographers used to write in the blank spaces — here there be dragons!  

Over the weekend I caught up with an old friend, with whom I had shared another takeaway coffee and a wander around the local park. He is working at a university library. All Australian unis depend on foreign students to remain solvent; with COVID19, a smaller number of these folk is expected to enrol in 2021. I think many people in the university sector are waiting to see what their jobs will look like when this happens. My friend is no exception. We swapped health updates as well while working our way around Wattle Park. 

A lot of people seem to be in this very provisional space at present. Whether we go up a ladder or down a snake seems to be one set of numbers away. The best to be hoped for is to keep plodding along, and staying off the radar. Is it a life stage thing? Was life always like this, or has it become more so recently?  

I wore a pink shirt this morning to give myself a bit of a lift, and, I hoped, to cast a healthy glow. I am developing a shirt colour theory of history. Garibaldi’s volunteers wore red shirts (the “Camicie Rosse“). So did the illegally-employed minions working for Victorian Labor Government MPs. These minions were paid out of public funds despite doing electorate work — quite naughty of their employers. (See the ABC News story for those who, like me, had forgotten about this rather sordid tale.) The fascists wore black shirts, Hitler’s Storm Troopers wore brown ones.  Conservative pollies — male ones, at least — seem to favour white shirts. Incidentally — hold the presses — I realise I have hardly worn my white shirts since leaving the paid workforce. So colour does stand for something. But what?