Dear Readers, the past month has been a real education in the kindness and thoughtfulness of friends, both online and in real life. And today, my friend L brought me something I’ve been thinking about getting for myself for ages – she’s lent me her spare microscope so I can have a look at my pond water and who knows what else?

I remember that when I did microbiology at Birkbeck about a hundred years ago, I loved spending time on the microscope best of all. Everything from the water that plants grow in to cross-sections of stems to the feet of a bluebottle suddenly became fascinating. The detail and the structures that are revealed are awe-inspiring, in the old-fashioned sense of the word – you can see the relationship between structure and function so much more clearly, and it’s especially delightful when you can see a tiny single-celled creature going about its business in a drop of water. One of my favourites is a tiny algae called Volvox, which forms colonies of up to 50,000 cells, and is very common in ponds.

Volvox (Photo By Frank Fox – http://www.mikro-foto.de, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20240900)

So, I shall shortly be asking my lovely long-suffering husband to head out to the garden to get me a jam jar full of pond water, and I shall report back on what I find! And if I’m not sure, L has also lent me this precious book on Freshwater Microbiology, published in 1918 and full of hand-drawn microscopic creatures.

In general news, my leg is generally improving, at least in terms of pain – I’m down to just having low-dose codeine and paracetamol once at night, from a high of 4000 mg of paracetamol and 240 mg of codeine, so that’s a real improvement, especially for my digestion. I go to see the consultant next Thursday, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get rid of at least one crutch and start building my strength back up again. Fingers crossed, but things are definitely heading in the right direction. I was also contacted by the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the Royal Free Hospital today, so I’ll be going for a bone density scan later in August.

On the cat front, we have opted to have Willow cremated, and should get her ashes back in a week or so, so that we can say goodbye to her properly. We will also be getting a pawprint and a fur-cutting – I know this might sound weird, but because we weren’t with her when she was put to sleep I think it might be a way of making it ‘real’. I guess it reminds me of when I found some silver hairs in my Mum’s hairbrush after she’d died – it felt somehow important to have a physical artifact, something that was actually part of her. We’re all different, of course, and there are no right answers.

I’m definitely not ready to let another cat into my poor bruised heart, but I am tentatively thinking that when I’m back to full mobility, I might foster again for a bit – I love having a cat in the house, and having the opportunity to learn more about these animals – everyone has his or her own personalities, quirks, and annoying/endearing habits, and they always teach me something. But again, let’s see how we go. I’m feeling a little bit gung-ho at the moment, as my leg ceases to be a cause of intermittent misery, but I need to be self-disciplined and to work within my limits. I’ve come so far (it’s only four and a bit weeks since my operation) and it would be silly to over do it or cause damage now.