4 - 8am

Do vote, if you're there, or maybe I just have one reader. Quite like that - one writer, one reader. Balance.

Always the same, whether I go to bed 10pm or 2am. About 2 1/2hrs later, I'm awake & in pain. It has to be my liver. My poor mum. How long did she go on like this, knowing and not knowing?

Symptoms: ~a month of aches somewhere deep inside; ~a few weeks ago, a cracked rib; ~in Colorado, no temperature control, wearing a jumper outside in 90 degree heat, unable to get warm; ~at the beginning, exploding volcanoes inside my right ribs, the whole centre of my body trying to burst out of some constraining sack; ~haven't been able to take any alcohol since January; ~at E&N's, sleeping 12 hours each night, with am & pm naps on top. Can all of that add up to some innocent little coincidence? When the worst of it is a few inches below the same right breast that had surgery 9 months ago? Some grim trickle-down effect? How long has it been there with my not knowing?

S asked if I regretted things there's no time left for. No. It's too late for children, or a relationship that entwines me for decades. I was angry last autumn, first diagnosis. Got it over with then. I'm oddly free.

Ever tried listening to your ipod tracks in alphabetical order? I'm particularly engaged with the letter M. Reminds me of Totteridge Library aged 12, being unable to get past the M, it used to tempt me the moment I'd returned last week's books: Alistair Maclean, de Maupassant, Somerset Maugham ...

From bed, I can see the sunrise reflected in the bathroom windowframe. All brilliant prospect.

Apologies for the cheesy playlist - you'll have to pretend it's New Year's Eve and I'm forcing you to listen to the endless hits on 45rpm until you beg mercy & then we dance down the street & collapse in a heap in front of the Sound of Music some time next afternoon. Be grateful for all the ones left out... Bonnie Tyler, Jonathan King, Olivia Newton-John. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

My unattractive habits. They are manifold. At university, did I really offset a gin & tonic with a pickled herring? The same year our wonderful Daphne the Hall of Residence cleaner attended the opening of the "Thames Barrier Reef".

MP, the ever practical soul, reckons she can stretch the stetson. That is, if her own repeat check-up doesn't go pear-shaped next Wed, in which case we'll be an entire family in chaos. Where to find space to even think about that?