The story of my life

14st 4lb; 3.0 units of alcohol yesterday; 1,205 days before death; on the verge (but luckily only a grass one in need of cutting).

The day began in bed reading my press cuttings on my laptop. Well, one press cutting to be precise. An incisive piece pronouncing that “You know recession has hit when DFS is forced to put out Christmas adverts in mid-October”. Overlooking the fact that their sofas are made to order, typically with a six week lead time, and that they have therefore always advertised at precisely this time of year for pre-Christmas delivery. As has and does every other furniture retailer in the sodding land.

I remember now why I gave up working full time in PR. It was very bad indeed for my blood pressure.

Meanwhile in Cheshire, The Less Tall Brunette from those parts got her father to drive her back to the local A&E department this afternoon, as a result of continuing pain in her foot. I learned this evening that a nurse had dug out the X-rays they had had taken last time and pointed out a clear fracture, expressing surprise that anyone could have told her anything different on her previous visit, when they had in fact sucked through their teeth and shaken their heads about the difficulty of interpreting them.

Then, perhaps anticipating a costly medical negligence suit, this nurse went on to say that they would not have put her foot in plaster in any case, as the broken metatarsal was well splinted by the bones on either side and seemed to be healing nicely of its own accord.

Finally, the nurse said that the progress of healing suggested that the LTCB could not have broken the bone in the Great North Run itself, but must have sustained the injury when that rugby playing oik stamped on her foot at the hideous ball two weeks earlier. The LTCB seemed to derive great comfort from knowing that she really had completed a half marathon with a fracture, and had done so in what now looked like a pretty respectable time compared with some of my considerably younger, fitter and taller cousins. It can only be a matter of time before she starts walking around Chester wearing a T-shirt with the legend “I ran the Great North Run with a broken foot. How hard am I?”

I spent all day on tedious domestic tasks like ironing, cutting the lawn and walking the dog, while desperately trying to think of something that might fill the newspaper column that has to be written tomorrow morning. Then I watched the ITV news and had a eureka moment as I was struck by the remarkable similarity between Barack Obama and Lewis Hamilton, both just a little bit black and on course for victory in their respective championships (with the key difference that the worst thing Hamilton is likely to get in the head on the winner’s podium is a champagne cork). But then I visualized the inevitable reader’s letter saying “Ban this evil racist, who clearly thinks that ‘they all look the same’.” So it was back to square one yet again. The story of my life.