Take Off Your Running Shoes

It's not same-sex marriages, it's Anthony

For anybody who is still wondering why we in the UK are having such a terrible summer of non-stop rain, please be assured it's nothing to do with - as the bishops said in the Telegraph - our general moral depravity. It's entirely to do with a decision Anthony took earlier this year, around April, when the weather forecasters first started saying that this summer would be record-breakingly hot. "That's it," Anthony said, "I can't take another stifling summer trying to work in my boiling hot study - I must put in air-conditioning." And I said - and try telling me I was wrong! - "sure, go ahead, that is one way to guarantee this turns out to be the least hot summer on record..." The air-conditioning went in perfectly smoothly, and it hasn't stopped raining since.

Funny

The marvellously resilient Standard Life, the medical insurance company that keeps paying my bills - which I am going to total up again soon, but are running at over a thousand pounds most weeks - has finally, three years into this, put up our monthly premium. Expected, right? I mean cancer treatment is killingly expensive. Only the funny thing is this - according to the letter, which we have been anticipating for months now, the increase isn't anything to do with me and my cancer. It's because Anthony, who's never cost Standard Life a penny, has, apparently, "moved into a new age category".

Important business

You'll be wanting to know how the fake tan is coming along this year. We are now into Day Three of this year's trial. I have, of course, been using fake tan mousses, sprays and creams for much longer than I've had cancer, but it's indicative of my status as a trial babe that I have probably tried every fake tanning system on the market, long before I ever volunteered for the numerous cancer trials I have now racked up.

In previous years it's always been my mantra that only the Estee Lauder fake tan spray works at all well, and with a minimum of peculiar smell. But this year my shopping outings are so restricted I only ever get to the local chemist, so I'm trialling L'Oreal, L'Oreal and Boots. Namely, L'Oreal Sublime Bronze Airbrush Effect; L'Oreal Sublime Bronze Multi Position anti-streaking self-tan spray, and Boots' Holiday Glow Body Lotion with all day moisturiser.

Well, I should say I attempted to try out L'Oreal Multi Position blah, blah, blah, but I couldn't get the little spray mechanism at the top to work at all. So that left the Sublime Bronze airbrush effect, which had absolutely no effect at all for two long days but is now finally penetrating the chalky layers of pale which cancer imposes on the skin, and - it may just be my imagination, only more time will tell - but I think my daily spraying of the stuff is now having some, shall we call it, 'merest tint of some colour' effect. So, a result I think.

Anna, keeper of mine and Harold Pinter's nails, says tanning moisturiser is what her assemblage of ritzy clients use. So I'm using the L'Oreal spray in the mornings and the Boots moisturiser as a top-up whenever I remember. I share this with you from deep, deep, deep into my psyche, as Dr Jablonski, author of Skin, A Natural History points out:

“Even though a tan is now associated with pathology, it has had such a profound impact on the American psyche that to be untan is to look as terribly uncool as an unplucked chicken,” said Dr. Jablonski of Penn State. “People tend to think they look healthier if they have some sort of glow on their cheeks.”

Even the delays...

...are wonderful on trains. I remember the countless times being stuck on a plane circling round Heathrow; now this train has come to stop for some reason, but it's a delight, I can see the wildflowers up close outside the window, and - I promise this is true - a rabbit has just poked its head out of a hole. This is idyllic, but I will shut up now, stretch out on my four empty seats and go to sleep now.

Would I have aborted myself?

Two couples are screening for the breast cancer gene, BRCA1, according to this report.

Is life with breast cancer worth living? Yes. And I think all my children would agree with that too, however angry they might be, at times, at what we all live with.

Trains v. planes

No competition actually - did you know they have free wireless on the train? Did you know they are wireless at all? And nifty little sockets into which to plug your mobile phone and/or laptop? I had no idea. I love trains and hate planes anyhow, but this just trumps all. Sitting on the GNER up to Edinburgh, arrive at station fifteen minutes before train leaves, time to get fruit salad at M&S Simply Food, stroll onto train - it's full but you can move your legs, and stretch out, not jammed into spaces sardines would find a squeeze...how do airplane companies stay in business?

On whether Israel is run by the Jews

Take a break from contemplating where the next boycott against us will be coming from to contemplate this (ignore the car ad and wait for the interview with Israeli ambassador).

Haemophiliacs and Aids

Sometimes you hear a story on the news and it brings back echoes. Yesterday I heard the first reports about an investigation being opened into what kind of Factor Eight (a blood component) the NHS has provided for haemophiliacs.

Back in the '90s I wrote a story for The Independent which you can read here about a local boy I knew whose parents were worried that he was being given human Factor Eight - which could potentially carry the Aids virus - instead of the manufactured type. I was amazed back then how very quickly the hospital backed down; I wrote one story, and within days all the haemophiliac children at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead were given the artificial - safer - Factor Eight.

At the time I thought, wow, sometimes being a journalist can be a really effective thing. But even then I was surprised at how fast the hospital acted: a couple of enquiries from a freelance journalist, one story in the paper and kaboom! hospital policy changed. Now I wonder just how uneasy the hospital was already feeling, and why it took a newspaper story to get them to act.

Doctors, again

Kasia Boddy sent me this - it's interesting, whether you have cancer or not...

Doctors and drugs companies

Read about it here.