Several folks have asked after Lola-pops’s health and I’ve been too busy with my head in my dissertation to write to everyone thanking them for their kind thoughts and letting everyone know that she’s in rude good health after two weeks of antibiotics and about 12 days without any food. She started to pick up a few days ago and has been progressing ever since. Today has been a milestone because she’s finished her antibiotics and also went back onto normal food tonight.

We’re no wiser in terms of a diagnosis but who cares when she’s looking so much better. I certainly don’t. All that’s important is that she’s eating properly and is as bouncy as Tigger on acid. Here she’s helping herself to a little honey which naturally oozes from her dad’s fingers because he’s a sweet god (not really, they were dipped in a jar).

Honestly – I have been having a serious paddy tonight because of my total drone-ness and DM reminded me that I’d said I was going to do just enough to pass and no more. I have spent the last two days wrestling with my data. First my licence to use the statistical software had run out and it’s no longer possible to re-subscribe online, then the spreadsheet formatting went awry, then I couldn’t remember how to make the statistical software do what I wanted it to do and all in all I would happily have “done an Alan” and lobbed my laptop out of an upstairs window into the road then taken a sledgehammer to it for good measure – no honestly, Alan REALLY did this! The trouble is I have no idea what’s good enough to get my pass and so I’m just doing my best. So I am now two days behind schedule and can see what little time off I’d earmarked going off down the swanny quicker than I can say assignment.