Shall we go, then?

It's always a bit of an ordeal, rattling around the house on the night before an operation. They wanted me down at Saint Feasance's tonight, of course, but Professor Nyfenfork graciously acceded to my request to wake up in my own bed, munch my own toast and watch the dawn mist roll back across my own garden.

They're opening me up again. And I shouldn't really be surprised. As to what they hope to find, not even the surgeons themselves know. They've tried most things already.

I'm getting on, I know. But strong. There's a few rounds in the old clip yet. Am I foolish to think that I can see my way to the end of today, along the sharp edge of the incising blade, under the skin of my tummy and round and around my guttyguts? Am I silly to imagine that I shall, indeed, finish the John Blackburn I began reading in the bath last Wednesday evening, that I shall listen to the Tallis Scholars' recording of the Lamentations of Jeremiah a few more times before the shutters come down, that I shall complete editing The Annotated Frank Richards before the smell and the buzzing of flies alerts the baker's boy that something is amiss in the study?

All these things I shall do, and more. The old apple tree will astound one and all with a crop or two yet. The lake has depths yet unplumbed. I have never walked to the top of Snetcher's Hill, and I shall. Life is rolling out like a mile-long Giles cartoon and I, my dear unknown friend, am there in the crowd.