I tell you this, not merely to make you feel the frustrating, heart crushing boredom of a trip to the motherland where death is the only other visitor, but because though my mother has gone on to make news herself in the afterlife, there seems to be no escape from the Hibernian doom-tolling bell.
A friend from schooldays who used to be married to my next-door neighbour and is now a Biochemist in Cambridge loves to assail me with dire warnings about bird flu casualties, Ebola, West Nile Fever, the unpreparedness of Britain for a terrorist attact, world food shortages (we're all going to starve) and Mutating Swine Flu Viruses. Sometimes with lurid pictures. He's a fun chap, as you can tell and our quarterly dinners are always joyous affairs. But the other day he broke new ground and sent me an email about Cancer Statistics which I reproduce without his permission:
In the past month I have been told about 3 colleagues or their spouses who have one form of cancer or another. The odds of getting it are 1 in 3 in the end. Everything eventually gets grim. Bummer.
Well what a little ray of sunshine.
Feeling cheery now, are you?
I was about to go off to Worcester man for the weekend, so trying to keep my mood light and buoyant, I didn't reply.
Later that night, I was just nodding off, my head full of the deliciousness awaiting me the next day after Worcester man swept into the station and bore me away in his convertible, when my phone chirruped with a text message.
Ah, Dominic, I thought, fondly.
But nope. Guess again. It was from, yes - you've guessed it - schoolfriend again. This was surprising. Schoolfriend hasn't texted me for maybe six months, since his last visit to London. I sat up, felt around for my specs, put on the light (yes it would have been easier to have done it the other way round) and read the message:
You are not easy to contact. Had to Google you. Got phone call from Scotland. Kirsty's man in hospital - see my emails.
No escape, you see. No ruddy escape.
