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Winston Churchill's black dog came ashore here a couple of days ago. I hadn't seen it for years. My, how it's grown in the meantime!

It seemed to think there was a bone buried round here. For a while I considered taking it for a walk down by the railway tracks, but this morning I summoned the resolve to chase it away again. Shoo! Go and dig up someone else's garden!

Ah, that's better!

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When the doctors give you the black spot, everything goes into a mad panic, and it's like a TV emergency room drama. Everyone talks of beating this thing. It's war, it's going to be tough, and we'll have to chop off your pecker (or your head, or whatever) but then you might be alright again.

Part of you is enthralled by all the activity focused on you, and you yourself need do nothing except drop your breeks for the peckerotomy and the poisoning and the frying.

20 years later, and you've lost your fear of the black spot (hooray!) but the side-effects of the peckerotomy get steadily worse. Most days, you're a happy survivor making the most of things, having a great life with a lovable partner. What would you do without her? What a fortunate creature!

Just occasionally, you find yourself wishing for the end, and for a moment you understand why some people throw themselves under trains. And the world wide mess doesn't exactly help the jollity levels. Time to curl up into a foetus and whimper. Just keep the supply of quadruple-dosage Somaloft coming, or is that made from oil too?