A Fence Around the Cuckoo

Yesterday was another of the hospital visits I must have before my op.  It was the long exhausting trek to the Lung Lady's Department.    I found when I got there that she had changed her sex and nationality, and was now a young lad from Eastern Europe.   Or it may of course have been, as he explained, that she was on her holidays. Anyway he was very nice too, and we had a good chat and I noted that he wrote the word "normal" against my test results on the computer, so that sounds reassuring.

We then shopped at Cooks, for our forthcoming 40th Wedding Anniversary celebrations.   Col left me at the door and went off to park the car, and I tottered in, holding onto freezers with one hand, my stick with the other, and trying to taste a Moroccan chicken dish they offered at the same time.

We ended up getting our old favourite - Thai green chicken curry - and some nice ice-cream and sorbet for afters.  So all I will have to do is to cook some plain rice.

Andy Murray gave us an exciting time yesterday, as he lost the first two sets to Fernando Verdasco, before finally winning the match.  I used to be a real fan of Wimbledon, but somehow as so much money came into it, a lot of the joy went out.  However, being so housebound, I am following it this year.  Verdasco is new to me, though obviously not to the circuit.  But what a player!

I have also been re-reading the first part of Ruth Park's autobiography "A Fence Around the Cuckoo".  Some amazing history in there, and how well she writes it.  She was born in NZ and moved to Oz when she married D'Arcy Niland (author of "The Shiralee", and "Call Me When the Cross Turns Over").

She had plenty of hardship and heartbreak in her life, but at the end of her second autobiography ("Fishing in the Styx"), she writes this:   "The only thing you have to offer another human being is your own state of mind. And the state of my mind had been gladness, gladness about the world I was in, and the fact that I was in it."