Prostate apocalypse

After a breakfast of smoked salmon and cream cheese and rye toast for me and Bakers for Norman, we set off to collect the terriers from Cherry Burton. It is a fine day, but the Westwood is still sodden when we arrive, so we find a new way into the woods, sticking to the grass. Out of the wind, in the sun, it feels pleasantly warm and birds are busily singing and collecting twigs for nests, dolly comes hurtling towards us, closely following a fleeing squirrel, which scrambles up a horse chestnut tree to safety. On the common there are luminous barriers on the path to Black Mill, which Teddy goes to investigate, I follow, my curiosity piqued, and find an open trench with a yellow gas pipeline revealed at the bottom. A sign says that the pipeline, which runs underground from southeast to northwest, is being repaired. The fine weather lifts my spirits and there are little after effects of yesterday's training session, other than a little stiffness across the shoulders, which results from the twenty lengths of butterfly. After dropping the dogs at Two Riggs, we return home and make a Bolognese sauce, using some soya mince and transfer this to the slow cooker, before changing and driving into Hull to visit Felicity at the infirmary. She is on ward 10, which is on the 10th floor and when I find her room, she is dressed and sitting on her bed and tells me she has been discharged and Melissa, her daughter, is due to collect her at four o'clock, when she leaves work. I offer to take her home in my car, but she is reluctant to change her daughters plans, so we laugh and chat for a couple of hours, until I have to leave or risk a parking ticket. Before I go, I source a wheelchair for her, so that Melissa can wheel her to the lift and then to the car, and promise to ring her the following day. After returning to the car, I drive the two hundred yards to St. Stephens shopping centre, where I buy a tea in Tesco's cafe and then do a little shopping, including more kippers for breakfast and a bottle of olive oil along with some tins of soup, chopped tomatoes, red kidney beans and cream soda. After stowing my shopping in the Chrysler, I return and look in TK Maxx and Sports Direct for a pair of swimming trunks, as the chlorine is progressively eating the pair I have. Tucked at the back of the rail of mens swimwear in Sports direct, I find a pair of black, Calvin Klein trunks, with a deeper side, as I am too old for skimpy speedos. Discretion prompts me to try them first, and when I put them on in the changing room, they are still a little too revealing and reluctantly put them back. I drive back home for seven, It is almost dark when I arrive, and as I make my way to the door, the plastic shopping bag splits and my bottle of olive oil breaks and deposits its contents on the drive. The oil quickly spreads across the Tarmac and as soon as I have safely deposited the rest in the kitchen and fed Norman, I take a mop and bucket with a bottle of washing up liquid and clear up the mess. Later I make a couple of panini for dinner, with cheddar cheese and sun dried tomatoes and accompanied by a pot of tea. After dinner I read Philip Roth's American Pastoral until bedtime, the book's narrator, Skip Zuckerman, has suffered a catastrophic prostatectomy, and been rendered impotent and incontinent, which flatly contradicts my own experience and it gets worse, the subject of the novel, Swede Levov, dies of metastatic prostate cancer, by chapter three, along with another three classmates from his high school reunion party, that Zuckerman attends. Roth is famous for exploring the dark side of human nature and has been accused by feminists of a certain mysogyny, but is also an acute observer of contemporary life. If his novel is an accurate reflection of American healthcare, then thank god for the NHS. I still like him though. To bed for eleven.