Kick that Uterus into Touch

Inspired by  a lovely Whatsapp conversation with the Brettonites this morning, I decided to get out of bed and venture into the kitchen and make some MACARONS. I have never made these before....you might call me a macaron virgin.  I see them in a wonderful patisserie shop window in Kensington every time I go up to the Marsden, and I always think that they look so enchanting - far too pretty to eat. I've watched the Bakeoff contestants make them too - in the early rounds. They must be a doddle! So...... found a recipe online 👍 Search through kitchen cupboards for ingredients  👍 hmmmmmmmm. almond flour? Thought I had some lurking in the recesses of the baking cupboard....can't find it.  A quick Google search tells me that if I substitute ground almonds for coconut flour, then I need to quarter the amount..... surely not! ? That will mean that I shall only need 22.5g of coconut flour to 210g powdered sugar (which I am assuming means 'icing sugar'). I decide to ignore ...

There’s not really much to report from the coal face here....... so I thought I’d pen some musings about playing the hand you’ve been dealt, and puzzling.  All my life, I have loved a puzzle. Right from being tiny, I was entertained utterly by puzzles of any description. I have that sort of a brain. I like to be challenged. I like to use my brain. In the last couple of decades, solving a puzzle has been more about “problem solving”..... especially at work! But take me back to the days of the simple puzzle! My lovely Nanna, Dorothy Cordwell, used to love a jigsaw. We have great family memories of Nanna (right up into her nineties) spending hours poring over a puzzle laid out on the dining table (had to eat on laps often due to the available table space being taken up for thousands of little cardboard pieces). Every now and then, you’d see her eyes light up as she dove into the box and retrieved the piece she’d been looking for. (As she aged, we sometimes had to untangle that particu...

 Today is Friday the 13th....... not allowing the traditional doom and gloom and superstitious anxieties of this date to get to me...... my third immunotherapy session, scheduled at 11 am - but if the pattern of the last two repeats itself, the infusion should begin around 11.45 and I will still be sitting in my treatment chair when the trolley comes around with tea, coffee and sandwiches - never want to miss the opportunity of lunch out! Friday the thirteenth ..... this has me musing... why is it an unlucky day? A quick trip to Wikipedia tells me that the day is known as  Triskaidekaphobia and the irrational fear of the day itself is called  paraskevidekatriaphobia ........(almost as difficult to say as Nivolumab).... . apparently, one of the theories is that it dates back to Norse times, and legend has it that a grand dinner was held for 12 important Norse gods, but Loki (the trickster, of dubious parentage, apparently a shape shifter, and up to no good most of the ti...

 I made a decision to go off sick from work when I was told that there was “a mass” in my sigmoid colon. We were still waiting to hear from the lab to see if it was a new primary or a secondary to my uterine cancer, but I did feel that after working through the previous month of screening procedures, then perhaps it was time to stay at home and take stock........ still feeling a little bit guilty (I think vocational work somehow enhances that guilt gene!) but I’m aware that stress is not great for cancer, and much as I love being a midwife, there are undoubtedly stresses to the job! My colleagues are all so lovely - no-one has expected me to do anything other than stay off work - but I do recognise that another body missing puts a real strain on our already stretched resources. So here’s a public thank you to my community midwives at St Helier - what a fantastic team of women....... (especially to Sam, who sent me SWEETIES, Wonder Woman sweeties!) My treatment started on Friday 16t...