Meanwhile

My Aunt-in-Law had suggested a goodbye lunch in Abingdon, and talked about quiches and salads. Seemed reasonable to me... By the time we got there a huge chunk of family had arrived, the table was groaning with a fabulous buffet, and champagne was already doing the rounds. Later, a couple of us went out to study the prettiness of old Abingdon; Ireland might be No Country for Old Men by Yeats'reckoning, but they wouldn't have to travel far to find a place of belonging. Here it is, the Thames and the Ock and the canal rich in ducks and colourful houseboats, abbey ruins and alms houses still picturesque while teens hang around the town centre desperate for something to happen beyond the growth of petunias in the local pubs' hanging baskets. It was a fine day.

Travel back to London next day was not so easy. A two and a half hour journey took us four, and we got back frazzled and stressed, when I found I had missed a phone call. An old friend of mine was in a coma in hospital.

The coma had been induced; the police and ambulance services had found him unconscious in his flat surrounded with blood. He was fortunate to have been talking to a wise mate on the phone when he drank a glass of something, didn't recognise the taste, started panicking and then, after a couple of sharp banging sounds, spoke no more. Said mate called 999, next thing my friend was in Intensive Care, out like the sort of light that stays out.

They have been trying to bring him round since yesterday night, and succeeded a couple of hours ago, but it was very touch and go. The glass of something he thought was water or white wine may have been a glass of neat GHB left by a close 'friend' whom my chum really needs to see the back of. All this just before he was headed out of London to begin anew.

Anyway, he's alive, seemingly not brain damaged, and his family are there. I will pop across the moment they feel it's OK.

For a whole bunch of reasons I'm playing this song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQP2Iow-4ZA