Apolo­gies. Post­ing has been poor and now the blog will be still more erratic for a week or so. My dad died sud­denly, but not unex­pec­tedly, last night. He was a couple of weeks short of his sixty-fifth birth­day.

A smoker for forty years, he had twice cheated death, lived with a lot of pain, and took some com­fort from the fact that his con­tin­ued exist­ence baffled doctors.

His mor­tal remains are prob­ably too worn out to be trans­plant­able, but he wanted his body to go to med­ical sci­ence — and, yes, he knew all the stor­ies about the kinds of things trainee doc­tors get up to.

That’s life. His is over. He will be missed. Now on with yours, and thanks for reading.