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Right I got that off my chest as they say, my previous blog I mean.

I returned to Taiwan yesterday, Wed. 4th April, and am now starting to get back into my Taipei “skin”.

My sojourn in England was eventful. I went to help my Mum during and after her mastectomy. Mum has made a wonderful recovery, everyone was amazed at how well she has done. However, because the cancer was a grade 3 (the worst kind before it spreads) she has been advised to have radio therapy. She has been lucky in that it had not spread to the Lymph glands but as the surgeon said, “although I have removed the breast I cannot guarantee that their are absolutely no breast cells left in the chest” and as the cancer was not Estrogen fed and Mum will not be getting Tamoxifen or similar and given the fact she is so well and healthy otherwise, radio therapy seems the way to go. It will probably start in about 4 weeks and will last for 3 weeks. Mum will be taken to Preston by car 5 days a week for a 5 minute treatment. Friends have already given her lots of advice about how to deal with the effects and I am sure she will pull through and go on to have a good life for a few more years yet. She was 84 on 19th December 2006.

I did some cleaning of the rather large house that has been “home” for44 years, took Mum on a few trips out.
It was UK mother’s day while I was there and we went on a drive to the Lake District, only about 90 mins. from her house, it was the Sunday after Mum came out of hospital and it was a day of changing weather. We set off in sunshine and experienced, rain sleet and snow. It was wonderful, I was especially happy to go to the Lakes, always a favourite place despite it being almost completely hill to hill people now. Because of the weather not too many people had ventured up there so the roads were clear. We found a delightful old country inn with a bar known as Badgers because of the nearby residence of said beasts.
They served good food amidst a room full of hill walkers. Whilst we enjoyed this hospitality the snow really came down, it was heavy wet stuff and at first didn’t really stick, however, once we set off again and started going up some of the hills it got quite thick and the road was covered. I was beginning to wonder if we might be stranded overnight as the car had no snow tires and the road wasn’t salted, luckily it was just above freezing and we soon got out of the blizzard like conditions once we left the hills. We ended up having afternoon tea by lake Coniston (where Campbell died trying to set the Land speed record) while watching the snow fall over the lake. See above picture.