Friends (and foes)

I'm aware that you may get the impression from this blog that having MND is not much more than an inconvenience with a possibly unpleasant end. You need to remember that my variation is Primary Lateral Sclerosis, the sort that affects the upper motor neurons (i.e. in the head, as opposed to the spine, I think), which is one of the slowest types. One person I know who has it reckoned it just prolonged the agony, but the truth is that it also allows you longer to enjoy life. So I'm grateful to a lovely widow who commented on my last but one post, Jane, who provided the link to the blog which she and her husband, Richard, kept in the 21 months between his diagnosis of pulmonary onset ALS and his death. (It's www.linketty.zoomshare.com .) That gives you more of a measure of the potency of MND at its most rampant.

Someone else whom I've I had contact with recently is Jerry Lyons. With Del Deanus he's co-writing Del's story. Del was a promising football player with Spurs Youth, and went on to management. A couple of years ago, he was diagnosed with MND, and he's just begun a blog (Visit http://delsstory.blogspot.com/ to read it. But please don't stop reading mine!)

We were a bit worried after my last sunny post, as Jane had seen no sign of our friendly goldfish. We didn't think a heron would have found them that quickly, but feared that some predatory newt lurking in the pond's muddy depths had finished them off, for breakfast, dinner and tea. I know that they have a predilection for tadpoles. Nature can be ruthless. The garden is alive with the sounds of birds, including baby sparrows in the next door garage roof and starlings under our tiles. One morning it was full of alarm calls as the stealth bomber sparrow hawk swooped in on a raid. It was seen off by an angry blackbird, but I fully expect to see an unfortunate ball of feathers seized before my eyes while I sit at the laptop in the dining room one of these days.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. At teatime yesterday Bryan, home to sort out my laptop's airport, inspected the pond carefully and eventually found six happy goldfish. Panic over!