Pyracantha berries.(Vacillation)

I wanted to talk about my spot of surgery today, but was unable to manage a SP via the shaving mirror. So instead, here is a nice picture of my neighbours bush, if you'll pardon the expression. Walking Maggie the dog today, I realised that time is running out. Tempus fugit, not in the middle aged sense of meaning, says he as he is aproaching birthday number 57 on the 23 inst. How old is middle aged? When does it start? When does it end? I went through quite a bad time in my mid thirties, not physically, but mentally. I felt uneasy. I felt that I had missed my academic chance, and wanted to study to improve myself? I did study with the OU, and what a splendid organisation. A lot of the ones on the telly do wear funny tank tops, but some of the tutors are excellent. By chance the course I was studying was new one, and had been specially developed. It was called D103. I enjoyed it and found that some of the things we were studying were things that I myself had been thinking about. One of the things we looked at were mid-life crisis, what it was, what caused it, how we should deal with it. I began to notice that there were some things about this that I had felt. I'll try to remember them because they helped me to understand the way I was feeling. First, let's say that these are mid-life transitions, a set of circumstances occur, say for example, you may lose a parent, partner, job. You develop a serious illness. You may feel that you have not been successful, and that life has passed you by. You may feel, that there is more behind, than there is in front, rather like climbing a mountain, going over the top, and starting the downward journey. I recognised that some of these things had affected me, and actually felt much better for knowing that I was certainly not unique, and that my feelings would pass, as they did. I threw myself into my study and enjoyed it immensely. I got a reasonable grade at the end, and enrolled on another new course, dealing largely with the enlightenment. On the day of our first tutorial, I had to work, and arrived about 15 minutes late, something I would normally never do. I arrived in my working gear, without the overalls, boots and jeans etc. The tutor asked me had I got the right course. I didn't think much of it at the time, just a little embarassed about being late. Later I thought that he had assumed that because I was wearing boots that perhaps the enlightenment was not the course for me, and that I might be better suited perhaps to bricklaying or plastering.
... My surgeon remarked to the sister as they were attempting to put a dressing on my rather large head(seven and three quarters) He said that I had a sloping head, he meant absolutely nothing by it, certainly not malicious. There used to be a patriotic magazine called John Bull, it always portrayed Irishmen with knuckles dragging the floor, and the head sloping sharply back from the brow, and of course the obligatory inane grin. I wondered perhaps if the OU tutor subscribed to John Bull. Perhaps he thought I was an Irishman? In the OU course reader, it went into great detail about racial stereotyping. I don't think he'd read that chapter. Forgive me, rant over. Dental appointment this afternoon. BTW, the reason I am running out of time is that I start the new job on the 19th inst.,and I need to build a log store as a lean-to on the shed. If it ever stops raining.
Hello Mudda, Hello father, Here I am in camp ...