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After a couple of spring-ish days to weaken our will to wear warm garments, winter has been back with a vengeance this week, with added bone-slicing south wind as a bonus. As I was putting the groceries in the car on Monday, the wind whipped the boot lid out of my hand and clonked me on the head with it. I saw stars. But unlike Jack who fell down and broke his crown, I didn't fix it with vinegar and brown paper. I don't think that would work, anyway. Don't take first aid advice from Mother Goose. Anyway, I'm now sporting a delightful yellow bruise right in the middle of my forehead.
My mother's partner had his melanoma removed from his head and a skin graft from his leg to cover it the last week. He hasn't got the results yet to know if it has spread, but the operation went well. He got sick of sitting at home and reading the other day, so my mother brought him in here so he could sit and read in a different setting while she went shopping. I went with her, then my mother felt like stretching her legs (what with the weather and caring for the patient, she hadn't had time for her daily walks for several days), so we walked along the whale watching platform.
For once it was worth it. The mothers and calves that spend each winter in the bay are not exciting whales. They don't normally splash their tails or spout water like proper whales on TV. What you usually get from our whales is a glimpse of something that you think might be a rock before it disappears; at most, if you're really lucky, you might see a flipper. But this year they're leaping about like dolphins. We saw six, and all of them quite close - less than a hundred metres - to the shore.
Then we went back to see how the patient was doing. He was excited to see that Cliff Richard will be touring Australia later this year. 'I went ten-pin bowling with him once,' he told us. 'Back when it was just new in England, me and the lads from the cycling club went one night, and Cliff and the Shadows were in the next lane, and we were the only people there so we had a competition. Top fellas.'
My mother's partner had his melanoma removed from his head and a skin graft from his leg to cover it the last week. He hasn't got the results yet to know if it has spread, but the operation went well. He got sick of sitting at home and reading the other day, so my mother brought him in here so he could sit and read in a different setting while she went shopping. I went with her, then my mother felt like stretching her legs (what with the weather and caring for the patient, she hadn't had time for her daily walks for several days), so we walked along the whale watching platform.
For once it was worth it. The mothers and calves that spend each winter in the bay are not exciting whales. They don't normally splash their tails or spout water like proper whales on TV. What you usually get from our whales is a glimpse of something that you think might be a rock before it disappears; at most, if you're really lucky, you might see a flipper. But this year they're leaping about like dolphins. We saw six, and all of them quite close - less than a hundred metres - to the shore.
Then we went back to see how the patient was doing. He was excited to see that Cliff Richard will be touring Australia later this year. 'I went ten-pin bowling with him once,' he told us. 'Back when it was just new in England, me and the lads from the cycling club went one night, and Cliff and the Shadows were in the next lane, and we were the only people there so we had a competition. Top fellas.'