I had a phonecall from my surgeon’s secretary today, enquiring as to whether I’d been to see the genetics consultant. Yeah, yeah, whatever. She’d been prompted to contact me by the surgeon herself. Should I be concerned that the surgeon is actually being proactive; wanting to find out my test results so she can plan my surgery.

Maybe I should be flattered with the attention.

But it’s got me thinking that maybe I should be taking some actions to prepare myself for going under the knife. Things like, getting healthy, losing some weight, cutting out the ciggies, stopping the booze. Well, my thoughts on surgery are, if there are complications, please let me go. I can’t think of a nicer way to die: drift off to sleep under anaesthetic; surrounded by people and not alone; painless; totally unaware. I’ll be having words with my anaesthetist to the effect of, please if something goes wrong, don’t make any effort to save me. Given the choice between an easy exit over a long-term brain injury, I know which I’d prefer.

In terms of preparing for my surgery, I’ve no idea what to do other than prepare for what’s going to come after it:

How to deal with the pain
How will I shower?
Will I bleed
Did I mention the pain?
Who will look after me and, more importantly, the little dog?
Can we do this when the weather is nice so that there’s some prospect of me convalescing in sunshine?
What about the scarring?

I think I’ve sorted thing in terms of the scarring issue. Once the wound has healed, I’m going to be sporting one of these for a few months until the scarring is less obvious:

I can’t think of anything finer. And to distract people’s attention, I also plan to wear a set of badly fitting wooden dentures. I’ll be the talk of the town.

Le pub quiz
I’m almost a regular at a pub quiz. Well, I’ve been twice, so it’s as good as. The competitiveness of people is quite astonishing; some even cheat by sharing answers across two teams. They have proper quiz team names and everything.

But I like the quiz that I go to in the sleepy Lancashire village of Dobcross. We have a meal, lots of wine, and then it starts. Maybe our merry band of three would do better if the quiz started before the third bottle of wine, but we do OK and could’ve been the top scorers last night, but for an error on my part.

I will never mistake Sophie Dahl for Sienna Miller again.

So I spent most of the day, hanging out in the Lancashire/Yorkshire hinterland. It’s an odd part of the world where, despite it DEFINITELY being in Lancashire, many people consider themselves Yorkshire. Fucking weirdos – why would you even do that? People think that Crimea is a hotbed of separatism, they need to get themselves to Saddleworth.

I love the beauty of the hills, the away from all the crap feeling that the area gives me, but I really don’t understand the awful broadband and lack of 3G mobile signal there. It’s as if the mobile companies and broadband providers have the area marked as “potential war zone” and so are limiting investment.

Could I get used to this? Well, the places are pretty, the pubs are great and the company is always very welcoming. But no, actually, I couldn’t.

None shall sleep
I snoozed from 6pm to 10.30pm this evening. It’s now 2am. Tempted as I am to take one of the white tablets, I shall restrain myself and let my natural state of slumber consume me. I think my genetics tests will show that I am part sloth.