If you've ever used one of those upturned water bottle dispensers they have in offices, when you take a glass of water from it, it gurgles and you can see and feel the water/air movement. Well, thats been the continuous state of my insides for the last 3 days. Not well at all. Shades of the moment in Pet Detective when Carey comes out the door of the shark tank all ripped to shreds, wafting his hands back and forth shouting 'do NOT go in there'. Do not need to go any further down the road to the turbo-lax skit/squit?! I am the third person I know to have got it, the second in my office. Chortling about all things botty aside, this was quite serious. Felt at least 500 years old, give or take 100! Repeat after me - you do not need to get sick at this time...

Isn't the human memory remarkable? Events of this year are burned upon my brain, but small things bring back particular incidents with a kind of vivid clarity that knocks your breath back. Driving pas the crem on sunday, I could hear the sounds of the mourners at the crem at Danny's funeral softly singing along to Ellan Vannin. It was an extraordinary moving moment, unrehearsed and exquisitely painful. I'm beyond tears now, but my soul isn't. There have been some seriously black moments this year, in a very personal sense as a human being and a parent, when I found, for example, that love for one's child is limitless. We have an understanding now, which I would never trade away, but in some selfish moments wish we hadn't had to go through this path to get there.

I heard the lounge lizard is looking for another job again, life then and now seems like another world and yet I find I cant raise a cent of sympathy even now.