Do not go gentle...

I came home via the doctor’s surgery, where I picked up the forms I needed to register as a patient. There were the usual questions about family history, which set me thinking about the state of my genes: my father’s side have a habit of dropping dead in their fifties. Then I called my mother. We talked about my uncle who is in a hospital in Scarborough, dying of cancer. My mother had just called another relative from that side of the family whom she doesn’t talk to often, and discovered that all the brothers are now dead, even though the youngest would only have been in their early forties. Then I checked my email to find news that a friend in Prague had died. 

With a sigh, I went to bed with the ipod on, thinking it would help me fall asleep. It took just one ballad to get to get me staring, saucer-eyed into the darkness, maggoty fear gripping my heart: what if Timorous Beast dies away over there in Japan?