My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends. I can’t eat or drink for pleasure anymore, so when they offer to come it’s only for the blessed chance to talk. Some of these comrades can easily fill a hall with paying customers avid to hear them: they are talkers with whom it’s a privilege just to keep up. Now at least I can do the listening for free. Can they come and see me? Yes, but only in a way. So now every day I go to a waiting room, and watch the awful news from Japan on cable TV (often closed-captioned, just to torture myself) and wait impatiently for a high dose of protons to be fired into my body at two-thirds the speed of light. What do I hope for? If not a cure, then a remission. And what do I want back? In the most beautiful apposition of two of the simplest words in our language: the freedom of speech.

A 50-metre lido that was always empty when I went.

Becoming more physically active.

If there could be a double of me to look after my child when I’m working.

Bloody radiator keeps banging. I think it needs air releasing but I don’t have a bleeding key.

Working on an assembly line in a plastics factory.

Like driving a Ford Mustang with the top down across the Golden Gate Bridge while the sun is setting and you have a dinner reservation in Sausalito.

How about The Hokey Cokey? That’s always fun, especially if they’re carrying the coffin.

As having done my best.

Last Tuesday at 10 past three.