Pre-assessment day, Tuesday 5th July

Looks like this surgery thing is for real then. A part of me had been hoping that it was some kind of dreamtime or that I was in a remake of The Truman Show and somebody soon was going to shout 'Cut!' and 'It's a wrap!' - but there's still no sign of it happening and the inevitable conclusion follows....

So, I had the assessment; height and weight (I pointed out to a pleasant but 'heard-it-before sister' that I was wearing a particularly heavy trousers belt with a solid metal buckle), bloods, ECG, MRSA swabs, urine sample, bp and undertook a thorough questionnaire. Most of this was about reassuring the QE that I was fit enough to undergo general anaesthetic - an outcome confirmed by a young female doctor who seemed perplexed by the revelation that I had been 'put to sleep' before but not as a result of any hospital visit. I was referring to the now outmoded but once common practice of anaesthetising by gas for dental extraction.

All this heavy-duty reality checking was a long way from an idyllic three-day weekend spent in mid-Wales. We had spotted a 'window' in our schedule last Friday. Claire had given us time off from grandparent duty and Di had contacted a recommended B&B located above Lake Bala. 'Bryniau Golau' was a favoured holiday location for Grahame and Tricia (fellow allotment-holders) and so we headed north-west early on Saturday afternoon.

The weather was wonderful - as you know - but the hedgerows, the trees, the wayside flowers, the stillness of the lake, the chapels, the churches, the orchids in the dunes at Aberdyfi, the vistas, the Mawddach estuary, the mazey-medieval, black-stone, streets of Dolgellau, the road up the valley and over the moor and down to Lake Vyrnwy - images burned into the retinae - but hopefully missing that small haemorrhage I was on about several 'posts' ago.

And back to Brum on Monday evening; humdrum Brum, home-come Brum. The best holidays are those you are glad to get away for - and glad to return from. I needed to be home because I needed to get my head into  a place where I could think about what was to come.