1,2, skip a few, 99

In my dream, I am in the passenger seat of my sister's car. She is driving down the M3 towards the sea and there is thick fog. We pass Southampton airport and then somehow we are afloat in our car boat on our way to a pub lunch on the estuary at Chichester. We stop and my father gets out of the back and he is old but he has no problem in walking and is happy we are on our way to lunch even though the air is still thick and damp. I woke up this morning thinking about him, and my sister, on what would have been his 99th birthday.

In June I had a holiday in England where I saw lots of family and friends and remembered why London is still my favourite city in the world despite how awful its leadership and prevailing culture and its politics are. Ganching and I always spent a day in Cambridge where I saw a wonderful exhibition by Hockney, with Hockney at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge and Kettle's Yard which I have been longing to see for years. Kettle's yard still inspires me in my thoughts and dreams. Of course, Ganching judged me in noisy silence for my slow walking around Cambridge but I forgive her as it is tedious in the extreme.

I came home and got Covid a couple of weeks later but got sick on a Friday and then worked all the following week from home despite losing my voice. This was down to me conserving my sick leave for surgery. I spent July consulting specialists and decided to go forward with the knee replacement surgery. I was originally going to do it in August but my boss was spending that month in Europe so asked me to cover for her and now I am going in September. I have a whiteboard with a running list of stuff for hospital and a stack of books which I consider suitable convalescence reading. Mind you, I also saw the physio for "pre-hab" which involves daily strengthening exercises for my calves and hamstrings and quads and my sister's detailed advice from both her knee replacements so it is not all planning for idle reading. Perhaps that was another trigger for thoughts of my dad, as it was his ill fated knee surgery which resulted in the mini stroke which ended up with him bed ridden for nearly two years before he died.