Last day of my current rehab course. I should really go in tomorrow but I'm picking up Kit's partner Izzy at Heathrow in the morning (flying in from Canada) so I finished the course a day early. Between the intensive therapy, the strain of a simple thing like getting myself in to Oxford three days a week, and the de-kippilization war I've been waging at home, I feel bloody awful. The chap in the picture has been standing at my left side throughout the course..I'm not sure anyone else in the room can see him and I'd swear he kept muttering gnomically about mortality, particularly disconcerting as he mutters in capital letters.

So for the next few weeks I'll be chauffeuring Kit and Izzy around visiting some of the highlights (hopefully) of this bit of the green and pleasant. I'm looking forward to it. I'd love to show Izzy Scotland and the North as well but it's not practical this trip. So London, the South and Midlands it is then...

"This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,--
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England."

....or so they say.