It’s just after midnight. The typing chair is a bit harder than I would like and is becoming uncomfortable, as my recent urological problems are still playing up. They aren’t really recent, it must be five weeks now – I will have to look it up. I will be discussing these problems on Thursday when my appointment at the GP finally comes round.

But first, I will look for a cushion. Self-help is always my first choice.

I can’t do much self help with the other problem, the lump on my arm. It is probably nothing, but it needs looking at. I lost a friend about 15 years ago. It started off as a small discolouration of the leg and over the course of three years, despite medical attention, it killed him. His wife, who coincidentally had a similar problem, but more advanced, had a more successful intervention and is still alive today. The moral of this is that you never know what is around the corner. I’ve had a couple of biopsies, several chest X-Rays (which are always a knee jerk over-reaction so don’t really count) and some cream to burn off some skin problems. What I haven’t had, so far, is cancer.I’m hoping that the current problem won’t be cancerous, and am hoping they can dig it out under local anaesthetic at the surgery. If it was on the front of my arm I would probably have a go at it myself, but it’s round the back and I can’t see it.

Meanwhile, more annoyingly, I switched from TESCO to ASDA for groceries this week. I have been getting annoyed with TESCO for never having parsnips so I tried ASDA. They are significantly cheaper with both food and delivery costs. Unfortunately they sent me a message this afternoon to say that they were substituting four items and that three were out of stock.

They swapped the lettuce, sent strawberries instead of raspberries, blueberries instead of figs and a full size cucumber instead of the small picnic size ones I ordered for Julia’s lunchbox.  Lettuce I can understand and the swap, and the same goes for the berries. They are all reasonable substitutions. Blue berries for figs, when we already have blueberries in the order? No way are they similar. Same for the cucumbers. I have half a full size one left, I specifically wanted the small ones.

Then there were the peppers – they couldn’t supply them. That is incomprehensible – TESCO has them in so many ways, surely ASDA could have found  a few, or a bag of mixed, or some green ones . . .

And finally – no flowers – which totally spoiled my great romantic gesture.

Then, to add insult to injury, they split the milk container and we found, after the driver had gone, that several cans were damaged. After paying them to deliver groceries we will still have to go out to buy milk.

This is very annoying.

I thought I’d reuse the Bath Inn and Doctor Who photos from Julia last week.