Life as we know it, Jim.

I always pretend that writing a blog is a way of keeping in touch with some of our scattered friends and relatives. Certainly it's appreciated by my mum-in-law who lives in Maine (Hello Nancy!). Other family members who never read the blog are always contactable by Facebook, especially my niece in San Francisco (Hi Lisa). I refuse to try Twitter.

I do enjoy getting my thoughts on paper when I have something on my mind. If I don't have the urge, I don't have to write. But writing a family blog is really quite a dishonest pastime. You edit out all the bad stuff, unless it can be made entertaining. Maybe if I tell the world that our lives are bright, wonderful and shining, they will be so.

Of course, this is all a bit academic as only a handful of people ever read this blog, and so this is for you.

We have had a bit of a scare this month. Hanna (my wife) found a lump which sounds a sinister thing, and it was. There were delays before we were given a final diagnosis and surgery was offered on December 29th. Normally for breast cancer we would have expected the NHS to offer surgery within a couple of weeks, but the local Hospital only has one surgeon who does these things and he was on holiday; then there's Christmas.

Alarming as this was, it was also incredibly inconvenient! For Hanna to get any rest in the school holidays and still be at home would be very difficult as our son Dan who has Angelman Syndrome is very demanding. Getting carers in the holidays is always difficult.

So, we went to see a surgeon in Cambridge last Thursday and he operated on Saturday.

On the day of the operation we drove over to Cambridge to be admitted to what is basically a "Travel Lodge" (a chain of cheap motels in the UK) that does operations. The staff were very friendly and helpful and the anesthetist popped by for a long chat. It turns out that one of his sons has Angelman Syndrome (AS) like Dan, and the other has diabetes, also like Dan. Now AS is very rare so we thought we must have met somewhere. It turns out that his wife addressed an AS conference that we attended 4 years ago. She spoke about getting her son into a residential college in Kent. One of the audience asked what he was studying and she replied "The end of Slavery"; that he was learning to do things for himself! We hope to have a few hours together soon.

Surgery went very well and we are waiting to see what further treatment might be needed. This week has been exhausting, but Dan has behaved really well and has been at school each day, so we could catch up on sleep and get chores done.

Hanna has had an endless chain of phone calls and visits from friends. Our friends the Lambtons popped by with an Amazon Kindle for for her and she loves it, also two interesting cakes (see photo), but fortunately not a padded bra (I already have one, thanks).

We are happily back on track for a proper family Christmas. Any worries can wait for next year. I guess that's the whole point of a midwinter festival; to celebrate getting this far and put off worrying about the lean months ahead.