Alan Bennett’s reflections in Untold Stories continue to come to me in strange (coincidental?) ways. First; a few days after remembering Nigel Slater’s Toast in this blog, Bennett refers to it in ways that it would be impolitic to include (but is on p.334 if you are interested). He talks about houses in which he has lived in a section called "A Room of My Own", leading me to remember the various rooms I had a boarding school and in my parents’; homes; dormitory room at Carolina (ghastly), apartment on Purefoy Road (also ghastly but happy), a flat in Cambridge (happy), a privileged room in college (fine), a hotel room in North Miami beach when I worked looking after British tourists (fun), another dorm room in Seabury Hall at Yale Divinity School (now a ‘pod’ in an ‘adaptive reuse’), an apartment off the Wake Forest Road in Raleigh, another near Rex Hospital, a rectory in Alexandria, Virginia, a house on Springdale Road in Druid Hills, Atlanta, an apartment complex filled with hard bodies, SUVs and rather pathetic divorced men like me, a wonderful bungalow on Coventry Road and now a mansion and a new house for the first time near Emory (happy). I could do the same with cars but will spare you.

Today my rather good internist gave me the obligatory lecture about how I was about to turn 50 and should have the essential colonoscopy. (My body bypasses my brain with certain things, not unlike keeping my tongue down at the dentist.) Not a happy prospect for me. Then I read about Bennett going through it and being diagnosed with cancer. He is along term survivor at this point and I am glad. I’m inspired to make the appointment and pray that the effects of the drugs for cowards are as good as advertised