One piece of bad news and lots of good news

Events are unfolding fast in our Hundon home. On Monday I attended West Suffolk Hospital to hear the judge ‒ in the guise of Dr Marquette, a young Maltese respiratory consultant ‒ pronounce sentence, and for the first time in well over a year, Ann was allowed to sit in with me. We knew it would be bad news by his over-solicitous greeting, and the presence of a Macmillan support nurse, and sure enough it was. The growth in the lung is a metastatic spread from my malignant melanoma. The primary was removed four years ago (see The black spot), when I hoped the sacrifice of an ear might appease the monster. But now it has reared its head once more, and the future looks bleak. Now we await the brain scan to see if there are other secondaries before the team decide my fate at a future meeting.

Happily, the bad-news day was followed by a very-good-news day. First, our grandson Luke texted to say the A-level results are out. He has two A's and a B, sufficient to take him to his first-choice university at Leeds. That is brilliant news!

Secondly, Andre has been driving for more than 10 years, but his Brazilian licence was only valid in UK for 6 months, so he has been unable to drive here for some time. Yesterday, after much coaching in driving on the left, managing roundabouts, and coping with a manual transmission, he finally took his test and passed. He now has a full British driving licence, and by way of celebration he bought Ann's car, and treated us all to lunch at Carluccio's in Bury. 

Thirdly, never one to hang around, carless Ann spent the afternoon visiting car show rooms. She quickly settled on a white, four-year old Golf TDI. It is in beautiful condition, at a competitive price, and her only hesitation was the dealer. He is a local, independent dealer trading from a showroom on an industrial estate. He has been there for twenty years, has a good online reputation, and sells top end cars with people coming from across the country to buy from him, but he does give a decent imitation of a wide boy, as though he's selling dodgy goods from the back of a barrow. However, he has offered to do a full service and provide a full year's MOT, and "guarantees" the car for twelve months. It drives smoothly and quietly and looks immaculate, and Ann needs a car quickly in case she has to start driving me to hospital for treatments, so she has taken the plunge and we pick it up next week. So, congratulations all round to Luke for getting into Leeds University, to Andre for passing his test and buying a car, and to Ann for choosing and buying a lovely car so quickly.

Borage in Hundon

On a totally different note, the fields round Hundon are filled with ripening crops of wheat and barley, and harvesting will soon be upon us. However, many fields are now filled with a beautiful blue flowering crop. This started a few years ago when many of the fields were bright yellow with rape seed, and just one local field turned blue. Now there seems to be no rape seed crop, but many of the fields have been turned over to borage. I stopped by one out of curiosity to pick a typical plant. It has five star petals of the deepest blue and gold colouring, though the stem is rough and prickly, and I looked up some details about this crop. The seeds are widely used for flavouring, but also they contain one of the richest sources of Gamma Linolenic Acid (GLA) so far discovered. GLA is a naturally occurring fatty acid, essential for human health.  Borage oil capsules are sold as dietary supplements and are also marketed under the name of Starflower capsules. It seems that the UK is the largest producer in the world for borage, hence the proliferation of blue fields round Hundon. Borage oil is used in the treatment of a wide range of conditions, such as helping multiple sclerosis (MS) sufferers. I shall have to visit our local health food shop and give them a try for my unrelenting pruritus.