1st of January 2019, Yorkshire.

The new inn, the village pub, always lays on a quarter of an hour of fireworks at midnight,

which we can see, if not actually from our bed, and certainly from the bedroom window.

Brushing my teeth this morning, I catch a glimpse of my New Year's self, and I'm depressed

to see how depleted I'm looking, though not quite as much as Raymond Briggs, who's

pretty much my age, and a good documentary on whom we watched earlier yesterday evening.

He's almost two-dimensional, thin to a knife blade.

Still, he drives, which, after the latest bout of arthritis in my ankle,

I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do.

7th of January.

On the war memorial at Malam is the inscription "'Live thou for England, we for England died.'

I don't know if this is a quotation or an injunction that was, as it were, custom made,

but I find it, if only slightly, misplaced,

"'and I don't wholly concur,

"'as the sentiment reduces what was a sacrifice to more of a bargain.

"'We did this for you, now see you do your bit in return by living in a way the dead might have approved,

whatever that might be.

It's an admonition, which I don't like, but war memorials often take this finger-wagging tone.

Do better.

8th of January.

My six-monthly aorta scan at University College Hospital

Due at 1230, I'm early, so that by 1245 I'm back home.

...