Best wishes for 2013 to all my readers. After a rainy Christmas, 2013 started with a bright clear morning and a high tide on the Estuary: conditions that make those perfect picture-postcard Topsham river scenes.
I'll start the year with a news update and general apology for neglecting friends, colleagues and other regular weblog correspondents. As you may or may not know, in late 2012 I was diagnosed with cancer of unknown primary (see It ain't that kind for the details) and have been pretty exhausted a lot of the time from the three-weekly chemotherapy sessions. Although we're not talking about a cure - this treatment is aimed at remission - the good news is that it's so far working as hoped. Next week I have the last session (for now), and I'm still otherwise fine health-wise (it's all going on in obscure lymph nodes I didn't even know existed, and only shows up on scans). So, with due caution, it's looking like "game on" for 2013. Have a good year! I certainly intend to have one.
- Ray
click any image to enlarge
As an old friend of mine (Italian) used to say: "Excellent."
ReplyDeleteI was intrigued by the false fronts on the cottages. The only vista where they would be appreciated would be from the water. But, I assume that these are (were) fisherman cottages. It almost looks like something in the Netherlands.
It's basically an artifice of Topsham's reinvention after its decline as a part, and imitates the Dutch-influenced architecture elsewhere in town. As far as is known, the cottage:
ReplyDelete"... was originally a sail loft and later a coal shed, In 1920 it was converted into a house, the gables added and re-named "Wixels". The name actually comes from the building on the other side of the road ... originally a nail factory run by "Wigzell's Spiral Fluted Nail Company"
- Exeter Through the Bottom of your Beer Glass
Thinking of you, and hoping your treatment continues to help!
ReplyDeleteWow, Ray! Awesome! Such good news!
ReplyDelete[And, now that I know you're getting back to fighting form ... I may ask you to help me figure out what the music in the bar scene at the end of Vladan Nikolic's movie, "Love" was. It's some sort of insane but rivetingly fascinating Serbian stuff like nothing I'd ever heard -- and my first thought after hearing it was, "Ray will know what it is ... "]
best wishes ... and keep those fingers dancing !
ReplyDeleteThanks, all. I shouldn't have tempted fate with such an upbeat start, as I managed to catch a rotten cold bug in early January. But I'm back up to speed now, got a good re-scan result - "stable" - and have the final chemo session (for the moment) tomorrow, after which I'm signed off for three months.
ReplyDelete