It seems the bloody spec on the base of my left thumb was a basal cell carcinoma. I say “was” as it is no longer attached to me. It may still “be” but when the pathology lab has finished with it, it will most definitely “be” a “was”.

Hopefully what was removed yesterday will be the end of it, at least for the immediate left thumb area otherwise it will eventually resemble a target as ever increasing rings of me are removed. The first excision was about half the size of my little finger nail. That proved insufficient as the little bastard was sending out scouting parties. Yesterday’s effort (removed by a plastic surgeon) was the size of a 10 cent piece. If she didn’t get it all this time because this little carcinoma was particularly adventurous then next time I imagine we may be looking at something resembling the size of a squash ball.

The upshot of this was that I no longer have the use of my left arm. Only temporarily of course but as this picture indicates, I’ll have a very smelly arm by the time that lot’s removed.

That seeming over-reaction is to keep a skin graft in place. A similarly sized piece of me was removed from my upper inner arm and sewn onto my thumb.

The upside is that there is a five day cricket test match between India and Australia underway and the most energy I am allowed to expend is waving the remote in the general direction of the TV. And picking up a glass. With my right hand. And thankfully wine bottles have screw caps. Well Australian wine bottles do. That Portuguese number which was in our admirable liquid based Advent Calendar had a cork in it so I had to prevail on the child bride to do the honours. We’re dreamin’ of a white and red and bubbly Christmas.

If I don’t get back to you before the 25th, have a good one.

The CB retired from teaching recently. I’ve been running my own business from home for a few years so this was the first time we had been thrust together all day every day, well most days, for……ever. As a consequence I felt it incumbent on me to give her (and females generally) some advice as to how this might work and what my future expectations would be……ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Men know why I am bent double laughing hysterically.

To try to disguise the fact it’s me speaking, I occasionally lapse into the third person. This isn’t me being pretentious, it’s my instinctive defence mechanism kicking in. Notwithstanding, here goes:

1. Working – Now that you’ve retired you will only be expected to undertake paid employment for two days a week. Beer doesn’t grow on trees you know.

2. House Work – That house ain’t going to clean itself my dear. Whilst your husband may be able to fly the space shuttle (in theory) don’t for a second expect him to understand the intricacies of a clothes cleaning implement unless it comprises a rock and a river. The same applies for that crushed wine glass shard sucking machine and the “hose in a box” that blasts shrivelled mushrooms out of pizza boxes but makes the boxes very soggy in the process. Remember your life-long aversion to lawn mowers? Chickens are on their way home to sleep as we speak.

3. Clothing – My expectations as to what you wear around the house are few. As has been the case since the dawn of time, the outside layer is irrelevant to all people except other women. And here’s a secret – no one cares if your arse looks big in it. Men are infinitely more concerned with whether other bits look big in it but you i.e. women generally, never ask that question, do you.

4. Underclothing – Now we’re talking. We know the transition from frilly and filmy to industrial strength has been happening by stealth for years but this need not happen. He does still have a pulse you know.

5. Sport – Now that you have more time on your hands you’ll be required to indulge your partner with feigned interest in pretty much every sport imaginable. The indifference of previous years, excused through pressures of work will no longer be tolerated. But keep the questions to a bare minimum. You may even learn to love the UFC. What’s not to like about two cute, diminutive, young ladies beating ten types of tripe out of each other. You could be sitting with your man right now (in between fetching the beers, sandwiches etc) watching two very average West Australian batsmen break every record in the book against the Worst Indies at the spiritual home of world cricket – Blundstone Arena, Hobart, as happened a couple of years ago.

6. Drinking – You’re still allowed to drink. This was going to be at number 1 but I wanted to make you sweat.

7. Children – You’ll like this one (and what’s not to like about the others so far). Now’s the time when your cash hoovers are replaced by a second generation of cash hoovers. The best part is that they now live somewhere else so you can hide when you see them coming up the driveway.

8. Food Preparation – Your devotion to the kitchen is very much appreciated. No, really. Now if you could only look a bit more like Nigella when you do it. But forget about the accompanying commentary.

9. Music – We know the transition from Barry Manilow to Celtic Punk has been problematic but rest assured, you’ll be humming Kiss Me I’m Shitfaced in the car before you know it. Despite the dominance of the airwaves by wimpy trousers like One Deflection and Taylor’s Wiffed (whoever they are), there is still a vast underground world of hard partying, mysoginistic, drug fuelled thrashers for your viewing and participatory pleasure. Accompanying Not Garfunkel’s next world tour should give you a taste of this enchanting world.

10. Retirement – Enjoy it. You’ve earned it.

Thus endeth my suicide note.

I’ve just spent a few days in Holland. If John Denver was still around he’d hate the place. Searching for a Rocky Mountain High (the Rocky Mountain bit, not the high bit – that’s everywhere) here would be like looking for a massage with a happy ending at a Puritan League meeting. The only hills here are inverted – when you go down into a tunnel and come up and out the other side.

I got here on Finnair, which I’ve never used before. After decades of travel it’s unusual for me to experience a new (to me) airline despite the fact that new airlines are springing up all over the place all of the time. Perhaps that’s because you’d avoid most of the new budget outfits like the plague.

But Finnair was great. One disappointment, if you could call it that, was that the cabin crew in the part of the plane I was in were all Asian (bogus racism alert!!!!!!). We did leave from Singapore so maybe it was the local crew but I expected at least one or two cool blondes. But I’m not complaining. Pick an Asian airline, any one – Cathay Pacific, Singapore, Malaysian, Korean Air etc – and all of their people are guaranteed to know the difference between offering a service and being your servant. That can’t be said about certain Australian, US and British airlines, some of whose fussbudgets would prefer to throw that drink in your lap as serve it to you with a smile (which should always be reciprocated – free piece of advice there). But in this case it could certainly be said about Finnair.

We landed in Helsinki on the way to Amsterdam and I saw snow for the first time in years. I also wore a coat and a scarf when I got off the plane there and later in Amsterdam also for the first time in years. The first day in Holland was bitterly cold. The sort or cold where you could snap off an ear and not feel a thing. I was reminded of the last time the CB and I were in Europe in winter on vacation and vowed and declared never to do it again. This was business though so I guess it didn’t count. And it was November so not officially winter unless the EU has redefined the seasons in accordance with some transgender, marriage equality, climate change directive from the UN to spite the Brits because of Brexit. Or something.

Like another flat place we visited recently – Denmark – there seem to be more bicycles than cars, especially in and around the town centres. I was in Haarlem and there were bike lanes everywhere. For the uninitiated this is a real hazard and the bells don’t help because they can be ringing all around you or not at all as the case may be. When my colleagues and I ventured outside we were constantly hauling each other out of the way of whispering, wurring, scarf trailing missiles. It was like a practice run for the future world of electric cars. They’ll have to be fitted with diesel engines so we can hear them coming.

On my way home it was Finnair again to Helsinki then on to Hong Kong then Brisbane. I had been fortunate in that my contracted employer has stumped up for biz class so I settled into my cubicle, contemplating the glass of Perrier (champagne, not water) on my little side table and hoped the bunch of Australian women who were screeching and cackling on the other side of the cabin didn’t do something really embarrassing that reflected badly on me. My inner snob is emerging; I’m a very intolerant traveller. By all means get pissed, I do it all the time, but leave the bogan on the cruise you just got off or wherever it is you’ve been.

Shit, I didn’t think I had that level of nastiness in me. Must be because I am currently immersed in Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens’ memoir. The old adage “the word is mightier than the sword” was written for him although he would have considered it trite and a cliché despite the fact that his word-sword and especially his spoken words were uncompromisingly and ruthlessly rapier sharp. He quotes William Safire as saying “clichés should be avoided like the plague”. Quite so. I use present tense in the previous sentence because it’s in his book and past tense in the sentence before that because tragically, he is no longer with us. But he is preserved forever in print and in the formaldehyde of YouTube.

You can’t complain about lie flat seats these days….but I’m going to. As I said previously, Finnair is great but, and this is really pushing it, you really need to lie on your right side because the space where your feet go sort of curves to the right. So if you lie on your left side you’re feet are against the curve and it’s like having your shoes on the wrong feet because the end bit is rather narrow. But this is Venezuelan President-for-life, Nicholas Maduro complaining that his steak is medium when it should be well-done so I shall shut up.

If anything of interest was going to happen between Helsinki and Brisbane, I would have let you know.

It didn’t.