A quickie this chilly morning as shortly I will be up at the Health Centre to stock up on my drugs for next month, have a word about this breathing problem, and possibly undergo some minor surgery on my shin where there is a nasty little bump the doctor in Heraklion diagnosed as a vein thrombosis. Oh, dear! Growing old is not pretty but then sometimes being young ain’t so good either. Douglas’s phone call last night was not exactly a bundle of laughs. He had been to see the oncologist during the day who gave him the worst possible scenario as to his cancer treatment and possible outcome and it sounds as if the treatment is as bad as the disease. Douglas is only forty-five, half his life ahead of him. I have decided that at my age should something like this happen to me I will refuse treatment and just ask for the pain killers. You feel so helpless witnessing a loved one’s pain, knowing there is not a damn thing you can do about it.
I see in yesterday’s headlines that the Americans have at last got tough on the obscene bonus culture, even to the point of reducing payouts by ninety percent, and high time too. Now why can’t Gordon Brown and his lot do the same? They can’t wait to put their fingers into everybody’s daily business, making laws to run people’s lives from morning to night and vice versa, but when it comes to dealing with something like this they’re all blab and flab. They haven’t lifted a finger to prevent what could be one of the most disastrous bits of industrial action of the last decade – the postal strike. Brown had the nerve in parliament to tell the Tory leader not to bring politics into the equation! What the hell is he if he’s not a politician, a prime minister supposedly there with his party to govern the country? Or are they there merely to fiddle their expenses? What a shower!
Still with the B’s (after bonus) I see also that the Bosnians are still unable to come to an agreement as to the constitution of their country and once again it is still religion that is the great divide, more than ethnicity. As it forever seems to do, trouble looms once more in the Balkans. Hey-ho, what a world!