50

Well, I made it to 50. I must check out the Saga insurance website now, just to see how much money I can save. There must be some advantage to being this age...

Have had a very good birthday weekend with some great presents and some lovely cards. We had some friends over last night for a meal and am now having a lazy morning watching the last round of the Open on the TV.

My faulty MP camera has come back from Germany again, so I'm hoping that this will be the end of the problem and we can start a long and fruitful relationship. Apparently, it is very unusual for the rangefinder to go out like that without the camera suffering some major trauma, which this one hasn't. Given that the shutter speed dial nearly fell off as I took it back to the dealer, due to a loose screw, the previous technician clearly wasn't doing his job properly.

Having got over the virus that I picked up - it took over a week to fully recover - we have been settling in with Betsy as she gets used to us and vice-versa. She is a great little dog, very well behaved, not yappy or nippy. We were able take her for her first walk on Friday so that will be interesting getting her used to the lead, the roads and traffic etc. So far, so good, I'd say.

I have been asked to attend a meeting of NICE in August and must get round to reading the documents that they want me to return, later today. I am a "patient expert" apparently, which is nice.

I have also been asked whether I would be willing to be interviewed again, this time for a journalist working on behalf of Roche, the drug company which makes the Rituximab. I agreed, on the condition that the piece isn't used in any News International publication. I'm not sure when they want to do that, but probably in the next couple of weeks.

Apart from that, things are pretty much running as planned at the moment. My next maintenance is in about 10 days and that must mean that I am half way through this stage of the treatment. Time goes so quickly.