Even more fortunate

Our sense that we’ve been lucky over this festive time has increased as we’ve heard more of others’ experiences. I’ve already told you of two deaths at this time this year. We have now heard of two more.

On Tuesday we ventured to the golf club & bumped into the friend to whom we’d given all those logs from our garden. He was a bit upset. His golfing partner for 40 years had just died. He was so pleased to be given some good news as I told him that our mutual friend, PD, had been told he was now in remission. The lymphoma he’d been treated for most of last year has gone. He’s still to go for regular screening as it may appear again, but the immediate danger is over.

Come News Year’s Eve, we heard a vehicle outside just before the gongs went. We didn’t bother to get up to look who it was. The next morning, we discovered it was an ambulance. Our neighbour Dave, who had so many stays in Blackpool hospital a while a go, had died. He apparently collapsed in front of his wife.

So that’s another couple of deaths. The last one affects us the most. His funeral we expect to attend. We wait to hear when it will be.

All this death makes us realise that we might as well make the most of our time & enjoy it. Some of these deaths were people only in their 60s, as are we. With this in mind, we’ve been reviewing our holiday plans & contemplating being more extravagant than we had been thinking. 2015 is going to be a big year for us. The Fox will be 65 in the spring – officially an old codger. Then in the summer we will be celebrating our Ruby (40^th) Wedding Anniversary. So celebration should be the theme for 2015 & really living life while we still can.

We're starting by just appreciating the new feeling of just being pleasantly warm now the central heating is fully repaired. That's joy in itself.