Plumbing
22 November

There's been a couple of items concerning plumbing recently.

Today, we had Crosby Central Heating round to look at our boiler. It had been losing pressure when we ran a bath or ran the hot tap in the kitchen. The engineer agreed with us that this was so and that it should not be the case. We'll need a replacement part and that will need ordering. In the meantime, we just keep topping the pressure up as and when we need to.

That was the domestic item; the personal item concerned my prostate. The previous week, I had been to see Dr Dye. I had a concern about restricted flow when passing water and a strange almost throbbing sensation in the area of my prostate.

So, she checked me out and told me that I have an enlarged prostate, which is not unusual in a man of my age, and that we need to have a test to see whether or not it is cancerous. The likelihood of this is remote as the prostate is smooth to the touch. Even if I do turn out to have prostate cancer, then prognosis is good. As Dr Dye explained to me, most men die with prostate cancer rather than from it.

What else has been going on. Well, on 11 November, I met up with my Quaker friend Ed and went to hear Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time at a Phil lunchtime concert. Whilst the performance wasn't as electric as the one given by Ensemble 10/10 during Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture, it was still very good and highly moving.

After a cup of tea with Ed, I took myself off to Liverpool Cathedral to see a couple of installations which are part of this year's Liverpool Biennial. The best of these was Laura Belém’s The Temple of a Thousand Bells.

And then on the 13th, it was worth pausing for a moment or two to acknowledge that Ross and I had been living at Kimberley Avenue for exactly a decade. It would be an understatement to say that that ten years has passed quickly. It's also a revelation to see those ten year old photographs and see how much we have made the place our own.

What else, oh, I've had another trip to CHET with the schoolchildren and I've had my first one-to-one tutorial at Hugh Baird now that I'm no longer attending on a weekly basis.

Ross and I went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I. It's another good and skillful rendition of one of the novels. I really don't know how you'd fare if you didn't know the background story at all but Ross and I both enjoyed it.

And I also read Mary Ann in Autumn by Armistead Maupin - another in his Tales of the City sequence. It's like meeting up with old friends and it was a good experience.