"Your platelets are a bit elevated", the doc says, and I think oh, that's good, elevated means up and that's got to be good, but I don't have a clue what it means so I ask him to tell me- but he's off on another topic. Anyway, I think, it can't be bad, or he'd prescribe something, wouldn't he? There's so much going on. He stares into his computer; that's where the answers lie.

Further blood tests have shown nothing nasty, and the next thing to do is check the prostate. Oh good, I get to check whether I've turned gay since the last time - will I like it? Well, I don't. It is not pleasant having a probing finger in the arsehole of one's body, at least I don't think so.

How is it? I ask. "Enlarged." Enlarged compared to normal size, or compared to last time you checked? "Last time I checked." I have to get up two or three times a night to pee, which is handy because I can stoke the fire so it won't go out during the wee small hours. All men over fifty have an enlarged prostate, which presses on the pee tube. Nothing really. You get used to it.

Same day I go to the skin cancer doc, and he sticks a needle repeatedly into my cheek and lower eyelid, to anesthetize the flesh about to be cut. Oh, but first! - just like the plastic surgeons on TV - he whips out a marker pen and draws a loopy line on my face. Cut along Line A. He's about to cut out a skin cancer which has been there about 10 years; it has to go. The scar is marvelous - about 4 centimetres long, starting just below the point where the right eye meets the nose, and extending downwards at a slope into the cheek - it could be a duelling scar, or the result of a knife fight in Panama City (that's the story I like best at the moment). Working on a history, to tell straight-faced.

Laddered with stitches (I hope the suture marks show afterwards) it is a fine addition to a lined and weathered face. Yes, you'll see a photo one day. I'm afraid I did a really stupid thing and lost my camera. I took it into the library, borrowed a book and started reading; when I got up to leave I must have left it there. Maybe even worse, I lost a lot of photos and videos too, going back as far as Wineglass bay, the arrival in Hobart, Mona, the grandkids' birthdays, the Wooden Boat Festival ... oh well, another twenty years it'll be ALL gone, so die to all that, it's gone, let it go. I need to relax.

It's been colder here in Hobart in summer than in Calgary, Canada in winter - we even had snow on the mountain last week! I walk around in 2 T-shirts, a woolen sweater, woolen socks, denims held up by belt and braces, and a padded parka I bought in an op shop in Philadelphia, marked U.S.A. Bobsled. Plus my Greek fisherman's hat.

We are moving in in a big way to the "flat" (one room apartment) at the back of our house, paying bills, buying firewood, cleaning the carport to store wood, getting stuff ready to go to the tip. Now we are warm (the woodfire I stoke when I get up to pee, remember?) it feels more like home. I just like comfort, after all that heroic stuff out at sea. Even watched TV for a whole night last night, for the first time in two-and-a-half years. Nothing's changed. Cop shows, Inspector Rex, Brat Camp. The News. Feel for the people in Christchurch, I have felt like I have been trapped under rubble (psychologically) most of my life, suffocated. A terrible experience for the families.

Thanks to those who exulted in, celebrated my clean bill of health!! Even better now!