An interesting Easter Friday

Last Tuesday I had a CAT scan of my stomach that revealed a large number of enlarged lymph nodes around the stomach.  They were obviously cancerous and were clearly well advanced for there to be so many of them.  So my life expectancy was obviously sharply reduced, but by how much is as yet unknown.  I have been feeling very poorly and weak but my weight has come down to 94kg so that is a compensation of sorts. I was up to 120kg at one stage.  I am in only slight and intermittent  pain from it

I told everyone about the scan and partly in consequence of that Joe came over this morning to have breakfast with me.  He wanted to spend time with his father while he can.  Since most other places were closed for the Holy day, we went to Maccas. 

We had a very lengthy talk about the big interest we have in common: American politics.  Although we both know the same facts, there was a difference in our conclusions about the matter.  Joe takes a very long-term view of where American politics are going whereas my horizons are pretty well limited to the mid-terms.  It seems possible that the GOP may regain control of the House at that time, which would spike Biden pretty well. Joe thinks that the Democrat party will eventually implode and lose power as a result of that

Anyway it was a great chat that I much enjoyed so it helped lift my mood considerably.

Then at 3pm my kindly brother came over at my request bringing with him my late mother's collection of family photos.  I thought that some might seem worth putting online.  I enjoyed seeing many of them and I have picked out three that seemed of particular interest.  

The first is of my sister "Jack" (Jacqueline) when she was a kid.  It is a good photo of her and is one of the few remaining traces of her life.  She was born 14.9.1945, died of breast cancer in her '60s and had no children. She was in general a good and kind person and remained good friends with Gary Ward, her ex-husband, for the whole of her life. He was there at her deathbed.  So I am not the only one in the famiy who keeps good relationships with former partners.  My other two siblings are still with their original partners.

Next is a photo of my mother and father in their younger days sitting in a vintage car -- a Whippet maybe. It looks like it had a dicky seat so  would have been "sporty" in its day.

And the third family photo is one I find mildly hilarious.  My father was described as a "bit of a lair" in his youth -- i.e. he enjoyed dressing fashionably.  You see both him and my mother in the photo. What gets me is the hat.  It is a super formal one -- maybe a Homburg. He wore it convincingly.

And Jenny came over tonight to share dinner.  I had asked her to dig out what she could of photos taken in her younger days.  When I met her she was already a mother of three so showed some effects of that.  Since she still looked pretty good at that age, however, I guessed that she must have looked rather  gorgeous in her teens. No good photos of her teenage self have survived but the photo of her below when she as about 11 gives a very good hint of how good she would have looked a few years later. She was holding ducklings

And a photo of Jen when she was 15.  Not terribly clear but it will have to do