Ceri, my sister, has asked me the meaning of “Blog” or how it came about but neither Douglas nor I know the answer. Perhaps someone out there can enlighten us? It’s a really weird word to begin with. Is it an acronym maybe?

Poor Puccini, usually just called Pooch – our youngest dog – was diagnosed a while back with cancer of the liver and is not the pretty little creature she once was but has a midriff like a solid football and no meat on her bones, all of which protrude horribly so that the entire skeleton can be felt. Her whole face has changed in consequence with a pointy snout that was never there before.. Our vet, Michael, was amazed when he saw the results of her blood test, that she was actually still alive and gave her six months, most of which is up but except for occasional moments of languor, she seems as sprightly as ever. Has lost her appetite though but will forage in other animal’s dishes to see what’s there, and allowing other animals to eat out of hers, very undoglike. Fortunately she appears to be in no pain which is strange because I was always led to believe that cancer is painful. I think of Douglas’s dad, William, who died last year of pancreatic cancer and who, in the hospital eventually said, “That’s enough of this,” pulled out all his tubes, fell into a coma and died. I remember our dog Isolde back in London who developed a growth (on the pituitary gland I think it was) and she was definitely in pain. She would come to me for comfort and me, in my ignorance and not realising it, would brush her impatiently aside and I still feel bad about that. Then one morning she appeared with her left front leg looking like an elephant’s foot and of course was rushed to the vet but, alas, too late. Such a beautiful, gentle creature. As Ceri has said, you get a puppy, or a kitten, and you are buying future heartache. So now we have three animals ailing; Pooch, Sweeny who is fourteen years old, and the cat, Hortense who is 22. Our last one died at 25 much to the amazement of our Cretan friends, the average life of a cat here evidently being about three years.

So I ask myself, if animals get sick and die, and even plants get sick and die, and even rocks can get sick, what was Mary Baker Eddy on about? And why does the church she founded have such a following of believers when it is obviously based on a false supposition? No worse I suppose than film stars who believe in the writing of a certain science fiction writer of dubious … ah, well, let’s leave it at that.

Interesting that Pooch’s blood test cost 130 euro and Douglas’s two day stay in hospital with all that entailed cost 161.48.