A busman's holiday

All is well up here. My body is in good shape and my doctors have discontinued all IV antibiotics.

I managed to get home both days over the weekend. Saturday was a little stressful. When I arrived home for lunch, Charlie was gavotting about in his usual exuberant way. Then, after a short while he started whining. The whining turned to wailing as he became doubled over with pain.

For the first time in his life, Charlie was able to communicate his concerns with words. He told us he had a sore tummy. Camilla asked him where it hurt and he pointed to the leftt side of the abdomen. Thankfully, this was not the appendix side.

Camilla and my mother both diagnosed colic and agreed that it should pass with time. I was stunned. They rarely reached any form of consensus about these things. As the third member of the judiciary, I concurred that the diagnosis must be correct, and my father did so as well. Concurred in the sense of made no objection. Who were we to blow against the wind?

I tentatively suggested that they give beer to horses when they have colic, but nobody was prepared to trial this treatment so I shut up and left it to the experts.

Charlie did not improve. Three hours passed and he remained distressed and doubled over with pain. He could not walk. The committee agreed that it was now time to take him to the Accident and Emergency Department of our local hospital, the Wesley. We decided that Camilla, my father and I all ought to go. If it proved to be serious, Camilla could then take me back to Desolation Row and deal with whatever needed her attention.

Charlie decided that he would like to go "for a drive" with my father and so Camilla and I travelled to the Wesley separately in our car. I was a little uneasy about going back there. Seven and a half months earlier, my father had taken me there in the middle of the day because my pneumonia had worsened and I was short of breath. That night, Doctors Woodrow and Scalia diagnosed my heart failure and told me I would have had days to live had I not checked into hospital. I have not slept in my own bed since.

Whilst a little uneasy about this, my primary focus was on Charlie. He has always been terrified of doctors. Hence, we told had him that he was going merely for a drive. Admission to hospital would be a torturous experience for an autistic child. Camilla and I comforted ourselves with the notion that he would only be admitted if there was a compelling reason to do so.

Dad got Charlie ought of his car. Charlie was a little better but still walked stooped over. We took him inside and Camilla explained to him that he was going to see a doctor and what the doctor would do. Charlie understood and asked questions. He was calm.

We then saw the doctor on duty, Jenny Bowles. I remembered Jenny from an admission a couple of years ago when I had slipped in the street, fallen backwards and broke both elbows as I landed on  open palms to back my fall. I must quickly add that it was midday and I was completely sober. Jenny recognised me and we explained the situation with Charlie. She had a niece with autism so she knew the deal.

Jenny told Charlie that she was going to listen to his tummy and look in his ears and mouth. Charlie said, no eyes and Jenny assured him that she did not need to shine a light into his eyes. She then pulled out her stethoscope and listened to Charlie's tummy. She looked into his ears and mouth and watched him walk. He was still somewhat crouched, but walking freely. Moreover, he was enjoying the whole experience. This was another measure of the progress he has made.

Jenny decided that Charlie indeed had colic. She gave him a balloon. Charlie asked to go to the toilet and my father took him into the cubicle. He came out cheerfully and announced he had done a poo. As Camilla punched in her PIN number to pay for the consultation, he was miraculously cured.

So we packed up our VADs and our healthy, vibrant boy and the whole entourage left the Wesley and headed home. We we very relieved that Charlie was well. It had been a busman's holiday for me but really nothing to complain about.


Until next time,

A turbulent priest

Things continue to go well. At the moment, my only real concern is the occasional flourish of stigmata from the VAD wounds. Pinochet remains a broken, bitter man in exile, living on memories. I think he is somewhere in Teddington. I am exercising well and tweaking my diet to maintain the best condition for surgery. Now would be a very good time to receive the call.

Noel is now free from all drains and attachments and healing fast. He is scheduled to be discharged on Tuesday and everything he does is marked with unbridled enthusiasm. He is high as a high school student mucking up in the last week of school. He goes AWOL for hours on end wandering the hospital, enjoying his freedom. Once night the nurses found him asleep in a chair down in outpatients. He refuses his physio sessions and won't study his post-transplant tablet regime for the discharge exam. We all know Noel well and nobody is too concerned. He'll never wander too far and will eventually do his study. He likes to bend the boundaries but is smart enough not to jeopardise his own well being.

So very soon, Voight and Hoffman will cease their hospital partnership. The Midnight Cowboy will return to Wynnum Bay and Ratso will remain in the big house. I will continue to keep up contact with Noel.  He's a good bloke and we will all miss him up here. At some point this year, he is likely to grace our living rooms when the Sixty Minutes story airs.

Noel is looking to get himself a new car once he gets home. He has decided on a Hilux but perhaps he could look a little further afield and see if Jon Voight's Le Baron is still on the market. If he could secure that vehicle it would make for a great and very lucrative story.

Mandy is doing well. She is now able to get in and out of bed unaided and is pushing her VAD around the hospital corridors. It took me until late November or early December to do these things, but this is not a fair comparison. I was very sick and she is harnessing the amazing regenerative powers of youth. Mandy should heal quickly and well and she deserves that.

Mandy is aiming to spend most of her time on the waiting list at home. Her mother is a nurse and it looks like home will be a practical alternative for her circumstances. I really hope she can do this. Hospitals are inherently depressing places, filled with the old and infirm (with a few fabulously good looking middle aged lawyers here and there to break the monotony). They are not conducive to being young and free.

Over the course of my confinement, I have had a few visits from the former Bishop of Toowoomba, Bishop Bill Morris. My first memories of Bishop Morris date to my long lost adolescence. At the time, he was a young and vibrant new Bishop and the diocese quickly warmed to his energy and compassion. He became much loved and respected by his priests and parishioners with very good reason. He was an excellent pastoral Bishop and a kind and gentle man.

In 2006, Bishop Morris wrote an Advent letter to his parishioners in which he had the audacity to suggest, amongst other things, that the Church ought to consider the ordination of women and married priests to meet the chronic shortages in dioceses such as his own. The Bishop merely suggested that it be a subject for debate within the Church. Many Catholics agree with this, whether progressive or otherwise. I see no issue whatsoever in the implementation of such reform. Indeed, it is a blight on the Church that it wasn't done a long time ago.

Some parishioners did not agree with Bishop Morris' views and reported him to the Doctrine for the Congregation of the Faith in Rome. This resulted in Pope Benedict XVI deciding that someone needed to rid him of this turbulent priest and Bishop Morris was asked to resign. He did.

Rome's action saw the events in faraway Toowoomba makes headlines around the world. Local priests and parishioners were outraged and staged protests. Many of them, such as my parents, were conservative and quiet people who had never previously participated in an organised protest about anything.

Several prominent Catholic scholars believe that Rome acted in breach of both canon and civil law, because Bishop Morris had been denied procedural fairness. Among them are Father Frank Brennan, a  Jesuit priest and respected lawyer whose father sat as Chief Justice on the bench of the High Court of Australia. Another is Bill Carter, a retired judge of the Queensland Supreme Court.

True to character, Bishop Morris appears neither bitter nor regretful. He just goes about his business of being a wonderful and kind priest. He is one of the few men I truly admire and I am proud to welcome him into my hospital room. He is a man of God and a man of the people. I sleep well knowing that he is praying for me. The Church would be much stronger and more relevant to the modern world if it were able to embrace and promote the views and works of progressive and good men such as Bishop Morris. We seem to have lost more than a little ground since the days of Pope John XXIII.


Until next time,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Many people have asked me what it was like to experience a long term coma. A good question indeed and one I shall attempt as best I can to answer.

I now know that Camilla, my parents and family spent eight tortured weeks conducting a horrific bedside vigil desperately encouraging a very sick body to rage against the dying of the light. I, however, was elsewhere. My recollection of the experience is understandably imperfect but has improved significantly over time.

In the coma, I constructed a disturbed alternative reality - a vivid and emotive dreamscape that had some elements of reality and many of my own creation. I am told this is common.


I started in a hospital room, but a different room to the one I was actually in. Camilla, Dr Thomson and my parents were all present at various times. There was a heavy curtain surrounding me, but I could hear conversations between them conducted outside the curtain. The conversations were supposed to be secret but I could hear them clearly. I recall Dr Thomson telling my parents that I had died and this caused them to fall apart with grief. They then decided to steal Camilla's mother's car from the parking station. Camilla and her mother were incensed and got the police involved.


As it turned out I had not died and was released from hospital. There was no VAD and no illness. I was completely recovered in all respects. My sister, Shelley, then had twins. 


Camilla and I were then invited to a large party at Dr Thomson's house. He lived in Toowoomba, in a big house near East Creek. Camilla and Mrs Thomson were now good friends. For some reason, I was not allowed to drink alcohol at the party, but everyone else was. They were drinking excellent wine from Dr Thomson's cellar, all in moderation in a very civilised and urbane manner. My temperance was not a concern for me, as I was greatly enjoying the company of the Thomsons and their friends.


A few days after the party, Camilla and I visited the Thomsons and we thanked them for their hospitality. They said that we were friends and that was what friends did.


I then played a game of golf on a country golf course with some mates. We abandoned the golf game and decided to started drinking cheap nasty spirits. We got drunk and rowdy and found what we believed to be an abandoned warehouse next to the golf course. I found a darkened room in the warehouse and it contained a bed. I then damaged something in the room. I cannot recall what it was. It may have been a window. I crashed on the bed and fell into a deep drunken slumber.

I was awoken by a security guard brandishing a flashlight. He said that I had been trespassing and had damaged the property of the company he worked for. It was a large American company and corporate policy was to sue to the full extent of the law, however trivial the incident. 


I then did a dumb thing, because I was scared. I confessed that I had trespassed and damaged company property. He completed an incident report and I signed it. He then left.


I immediately realised that this was a stupid, stupid thing to have done. Had I shut my mouth, the company had no case against me. My own foolish confession had given them all the evidence they needed to put me in jail. So much for years of training. I was just an idiot.


I then decided that the only thing to do was run. To evade service. They could not prosecute me if they could not serve me.


Our family then began life on the run, moving steadily North. We spent a few days at different locations. We stopped at a resort near Mackay where I had conducted a mediation years before. It was safe and one night we were there Bob Dylan's son and his band put on a show in the lounge. 


But the company process servers got word where we were. Someone tipped us off and we kept moving North. We stayed at a farm outside Townsville owned by some friends. They were convening a camp for underprivileged children so we helped out with that. It was a happy few days but we knew the company process servers would find us. Our only choice was to keep going North to Papua New Guinea. We organised a small plane and our friends saw us off at the local airport.


I then can recall being back in a hospital bed surrounded by drapes. I was screaming like a banshee and could not get out of bed. I would see inanimate objects in the room become animated as monsters. The nurses yelled at me to control myself.

That's all I can really remember. There were no bright lights that I walked towards. Just lots of fright and running from trouble.

Waking up was a gradual process. There was no moment of my eyes suddenly opening and my consciousness returning to the real world. It happened slowly over a few days.

I then had great difficulty distinguishing what I had dreamed and what had actually happened. I asked my sister how the twins were going.

I guess my dream sequence has meaning to some extent and I am sure that anyone who would be interested enough to do so, from an eminent psychiatrist to a pop psychologist, would be able to distill the events into a meaningful response to recent events. I was on enough sedatives to put down a horse and I am told that this of itself is a factor which promotes distressing dreams.

I cannot help but believe that some things from the outside world permeated through to my subconscious. They were not actual events as such, but more impressions and silhouettes of reality, which were incorporated into my new perceived reality.

So that, for what it is worth, was what I saw when addled with drugs and close to death.  Somehow I managed to summon sufficient rage against the dying of the light. The lion's share of the credit, of course, must go to the many doctors whose skills and expertise got me through these darkest of days. I like to think that they too were able to invoke some degree of rage in successfully fighting the good fight.



Until next time,

Days of wine and roses

The last few days have been very positive. Things have been pretty good health wise, so there have been some opportunities to get out a little and break the soul-destroying tedium of Hospitalworld.

On Monday, I received a visit from my maternal grandmother. Nan will turn 96 next month, but she is still  fiercely independent. She lives at home and cooks for herself. She played tennis into her eighties. Nan could not entertain the thought of a nursing home. She lives life on her terms. I offered to arrange her a wheelchair to escort her from car to room and she would not have a bar of it. She would walk, slowly and proudly, all the way, by herself.

Nan is a lovely, gentle lady and I was very pleased that she was able to travel from Toowoomba to visit. My uncle Jim and auntie Annette were taking her for a short vacation to the Sunshine Coast, so they were able to stop by the hospital on the way through. It was good to see them. For a time, it looked like Nan would outlive me. Even when I get the transplant, it will be some time before I get to Toowoomba. For many reasons, it was a welcome and timely visit.

Yesterday, I got out for a pub lunch with my best mate, Rhino. It's been and long time since we've enjoyed a beer together and I daresay the only time we've only consumed one each. Rhino was able to make it to Bluesfest to see the Pogues, taking his older kids to experience some classic old people music. They got a good position close to the stage and were near enough for Shane MacGowan to spill a beer on them. Shane was, of course, very drunk but on song. Whilst I am disappointed that I could not get there, I was much pleased that Rhino could. His dear mother took a bad fall recently and it was difficult for him to get away. Rhino has been a terrific mate during this saga. We'll definitely get to Bluesfest next year.

Having a little lunch session at the pub should have been the prelude to a quiet relaxed afternoon, but my physiotherapist had other, more sinister, ideas. Lisa politely suggested a session of hill walking, just a little further and steeper than we had been doing previously. Lisa knows I cannot say no to her and she ruthlessly and mercilessly exploits this weakness for her own sadistic pleasure. Mind you, I cannot complain. She is invariably a pleasure to work with and has produced results.

Today we finished my medical stuff early and my lovely nurse Bridget suggested that Camilla and I check out Redcliffe or Sandgate for a seaside lunch. Bridget is full of good ideas and this was a particularly fine one. I had not seen the ocean for many months and we decided that a salty sea breeze was the perfect accompaniment to a decent meal. These areas were virtually unknown to us and we had never really given them much thought.

We chose to dine at Morgans, a fabulous purveyor of seafood overlooking the marina. We sat on the deck, breathed in the salt air and worked our way through an enormous platter of the freshest seafood, including Pacific oysters, Moreton Bay bugs, tiger prawns and spanner crab. It was divine. We then took a slow drive along the waterfront with the windows down. Then reluctantly it was back to the stark reality of Hospitalworld.

I apologise for being nauseatingly positive today. This Polyanna manner is completely out of character and I will make sure I take a strong dose of cynical pills and resume normal programming next post.


Until next time,

Exchanging a walk on part in the war for the lead role in a cage

Whilst I am desperately missing my family, I am also desperately missing my work.

Practising as a litigation lawyer is our version of macho. It's intense, combative and tactical. Your opposing lawyers are very much your opponents and each side strives to outwit, outmanoeuvre and outlast the other. Alliances are formed and broken. Compliant witnesses turn hostile. The rules of the game change as new laws are made and new precedents are set. Hearings are listed before good judges and bad judges. The enemy briefs good barristers and sometimes bad barristers. Important victories are won and lost over pleadings and disclosure of documents. Temporary injunctions are sought and either obtained or repelled. Clients run out of stamina and money. It's heady stuff. Litigation is war. It's both demanding and exhilarating.

Adding an insolvency angle to my practice creates a challenging new dimension to the dynamic. For each new file there will be, generally speaking, a new problem containing a limited amount of wealth and numerous competing stakeholders all of whom want to maximise their share of it. There are secured creditors and unsecured creditors. Receivers and liquidators. Landlords, suppliers and employees. On every given matter, I will be asked to act for one of these players with the role of advising how to advance his, her or its interests in the game.

Like most litigators, I have always worked long and hard. I have never had time for hobbies or sport. Spending time with family and spending time at work will completely consume the waking hours. There is little time for much else.

I've played the game for a while now, and like most things you enjoy it more once you know what you are doing. Golf is more fun when you shoot in the low eighties, rather than trying to scrape below a hundred.

I  have never regretted my chosen career. The majority of my friends are lawyers, many of them litigators. It plays a large part in defining who I am. It earns me a decent living and enables my family to live in a nice home in a nice suburb. I drive a nice car, as does my wife, and my daughter attends a nice school. My son attends a very nice autism centre and is making more than nice progress. We holiday in nice places, eat nice food in nice restaurants and drink nice wine.

We are never going to be fabulously wealthy and our money is earned through working hard and smart. Yet we will never be destitute and our children will never be denied opportunities. Every year I pay enough tax to support a largish mini-bus load of pensioners. We donate to charities.

All in all, I have led a good, busy and productive life, centred around family and work, as an independent and intelligent man.

My world was completely demolished the day I was admitted to hospital. For over seven months now, I have been institutionalised. There is no privacy, no independence and no dignity. The day revolves around medication, dressings, consultations with doctors, observations, scans and physiotherapy. I eat slop brought around on a trolley. I have long stretches of leisure time. I have no staff to manage and no clients to advise. I inhabit a small room where life is centred on a bed. I call for assistance with basic tasks. It is a major expedition to mobilise anywhere.

Somehow, I have kept patient and sane. This is, I believe, because I have always maintained a tenuous grip on the old world. I see my wife every day and we try to have lunch together every day. I see my children at home every weekend. I maintain contact with work to provide advice and assistance. I interact with friends and extended family. I read online newspapers every day and watch documentaries and current affairs programs.

In the movies, prisoners say that you only serve two days of your sentence - the day you go in and the day you get out. This is a romantic notion, but not an accurate one. I have felt every one of 170 odd conscious days of my confinement. Periodically throughout each day I have counted the remaining hours until I hope to fall asleep.

My days in hospital will come to an end, but there is no way of knowing when. That is frustrating. It precludes any planning. The return to the world remains a vague and nebulous concept.

In the interim, I must simply channel my inner Rick Parfitt and maintain the Status Quo. Each day endured is a day closer to transplant and a day closer to discharge.



Until next time,

Still crazy after all these years

On 21 February 2012, after four and a half long and arduous months in hospital, my battered body turned forty. It was a limp-over-the-line effort, but we got there somehow.

The day started badly. I was not in the best frame of mind as I had hoped to have had the transplant by this date. Logic told me that this thing does not respect my deadlines but sentiment had been fooling me into thinking that there would be beautiful symmetry in receiving the ultimate gift on a milestone birthday.

I had made plans to have dinner with my good friends, David and Kate Schwarz, at a fine eatery in the City called Urbane. Then, Camilla and I would spend the night at a posh hotel. Alas, the Impaler had other ideas and I began the morning with a flourish of stigmata from the VAD wounds. It gushed all morning.

Camilla and my parents visited and made a gallant effort to cheer me up. The nurses did a whip around, bought me a cake and sang Happy Birthday.  But I was far from festive. Camilla called Kate to postpone the dinner and she cancelled the hotel booking.

Then the Impaler decided to give me a little break. The bleeding stopped. Dr Thomson gave us his mandate to venture out to dinner, so Camilla called Kate with the delightful news that dinner was back on.

By mid-afternoon, Rhino had arrived for a visit so I invited him to dinner. He obtained a leave pass from Helen and Thunderbirds were go.

Dinner was wonderful. We savoured a seven course degustation feast. We ate crayfish, wagyu beef and lamb. We drank some great wine including a punchy Blanc de Noir Champagne and a sublime Chateau d'Yeum generously donated by another friend.

For a few hours, life was good. I wasn't the guy in hospital waiting for a transplant. I was me. Thanks for the evening, guys. It was the best fortieth one could have!

The only downside was that I got to enjoy it with a select few. When I get better, I am going to have history's biggest 41st. It will be the party of all parties. Here's what I have in mind.

I'm going to invite all of my extended family. This thing has shown me that family is everything. I am privileged indeed to be part of a great clan.

I'm going to invite my friends. Many of my mates have stood tall and been counted when times have gotten tough. Mates have brought me meals, stopped in to chat, helped Camilla at home and given me books and dvds. Emma even arranged a surprise visit from Melbourne. Thank you one and all.

I'm going to invite my workmates. These guys have been tremendously supportive, as I have demonstrated in previous posts. Work mates indeed.

I'm going to invite all of my doctors, nurses and therapists. I know we are going to get this thing over the line together, one day. And I've heard that nobody parties like the medicos.

The cuisine will be Lebanese-Irish to reflect my ancestry. Guinness pie and tabbouleh. Kibbeh and stout. I'll invite my favourite chef, Anthony Bourdain, to handle the catering. Tony leads my ideal life in that he writes, travels and eats, all very well. Sort of my retirement plan. He also has great taste in music and may be able to bring some pals  (I'm thinking Lou Reed and a few Ramones) to play a few tunes. They can jam with my house band for the night, the Pogues. Naturally, His Bobness is also invited to attend and do whatever the Hell he likes. Shane MacGowan can prop up one side of the bar with him.

I'm going to invite Al Pacino, the world's greatest living actor. When I've had a few, I start to think I look a little like Al, and start to channel the Pacino presence. Then as I sober up, it becomes more Dustin Hoffman or Paul Simon. By the next morning, it's back to Rowan Atkinson or George Caloumbaris.

I'm going to invite Kinky Friedman. For the uninitiated, the Kinkster is a Jewish writer and country singer who emerged from Texas with his band The Texas Jewboys in the Seventies. He now writes mystery novels starring himself as the wisecracking, hard drinking private detective and his mates as his crime solving accomplices. He recently made a semi-serious run for Texas Governor. He prides himself as being the only Jewish adult in America who doesn't own real estate. Last year, Bellbowrie and I got to see Kinky in concert and chatted with him after the show. It was a great night and I laughed like a drain. I didn't laugh again until a couple of weeks ago when Dr Thomson arrived with Dr Javorsky to check out Pinochet at his worst. He pointed to his surgical mask and said, "You realise we just like to put these on and pretend to be doctors?" It was classic Hawkeye Pierce. Better invite Alan Alda too.

I'm going to invite my favourite writer, PJ O'Rourke. He may be right of Attilla the Hun but I love the things he writes about and how he does it. We just violently disagree a lot.

I'm going to invite Stephen Fry. The man is a genius. A modern Rennaissance man adept at writing, comic acting, serious acting and just about whatever else he pleases to attempt.

Finally, I'm going to invite Russell Crowe. After all, somebody needs to pay for it!


Until next time,

Czech Mate

For the next two weeks, three of my doctors will been in Prague attending an international heart lung transplant conference. They did not seek my imprimatur to gad off to the other side of the world. Nor did they offer to take me as an interesting subject.

So if an organ does become available in the near future, we'll need to do the transplant without my cardiac surgeon  (Bruce Thomson)  my head cardiologist (George Javorsky) and my Doogie Howser (Scott Mackenzie).

I blame George, because he's Czech and that must have something to do with it.

Somehow we will manage if need be. Dr Tesar is an excellent cardiac surgeon and for the next few weeks he walks on water, even if he does have the flu. My other cardiologists, Dr Platts and Dr Brown are excellent cardiologists as well so were are nicely covered. Even though Dr Platts is Tasmanian.

I am quite sure than doctors treat their conferences a little more seriously than lawyers do. I daresay that during the days my doctors will be diligently attending seminars and workshops on obscure transplant topics, and in the evenings attending quiet cocktail parties where they politely chat with their colleagues from Papworth, the Mayo Clinic and John Hopkins about their most special patients and how to best manage them. There will be no late night boozing, no gossip sessions, no dirty hookups and no shenanigans. What happens on tour comes home to Brisbane to be put to good use.

I understand that Dr Thomson is presenting a seminar on the Hospital's progress with the artificial heart. Dr Mackenzie is also presenting and for all I know Dr Javorsky will present as well, probably in Czech. I don't know how these blokes fit everything into a day. They are amazing.

We had another red letter day for Charlie yesterday. He calmly sat through a haircut. Thus far, haircuts have been diabolical experiences and akin to torture for Charlie. He would howl and cry whilst Camilla physically restrained him for the duration. At the mere mention of the word he would shriek No Haircut! Yesterday, he quietly waited half an hour for the hairdresser to be ready, sat calmly in the chair in Camilla's lap and had his haircut. He even asked to paint his hair, having keenly watched the previous customer receive a colour. The hairdresser gave him a brush and, without pigment, he painted his hair. This was another fantastic step forwards. He is progressing so well and we are claiming great victories in the battle against autism.

Charlie is even engaging in some imaginative play and now has a baby doll called Bruce. He picked up the name when Camilla was talking about Dr Thomson. Bruce has his own bottle and stroller. He also has a pink headband. So another cool Bruce is born.

A couple of days ago, a new patient was fitted to a VAD, so my days of being the only VAD guy in Queensland were short lived. She is now living a few doors up from me. Her name is Mandy and she is a mere twenty years old. She is young; young enough to be my daughter had I led a dilettante adolescence. That's too young to bear this cross. Like me, Mandy had heart failure because she caught a virus. Noel and I are trying to give Mandy as much support and encouragement as we can.  She'll get there. She was a little scared by how long Noel and I had been in hospital. She said to me, "I really admire Noel. He's been here since May."

I replied (as is the case), "May! He's only been here since September or October!"

That Noel! There's a good reason I bought his stories. They're safer with me.


Until next time,