… alone, STRAWBERRY MOOSE and me.

At lunchtime, The Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off into the sunset and the last that I heard, they were sitting in a hotel in Le Mans eating plastic pizza, ready to go for a blast down the Mulsanne Straight first thing tomorrow morning.

It’ll take me a while now to adapt to the quiet in the apartment and my accustomed solitude.

There was plenty of solitude in my bedroom last night, although I didn’t notice it. By the time that I’d finished my notes and gone through the usual routine, it was 22:30 when I finally crawled into bed, dead to the World, and I remember nothing whatsoever after that.

It was about 06:15 when I awoke this morning, with no memory of anything that might (or might not) have occurred during the night. There was nothing on the dictaphone either, so I took advantage of the situation by reviewing the radio programme for the coming weekend and sending it off.

Round about 07:00 everyone else began to stir so I went to join them in the living room after having had a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

We sat around chatting and drinking coffee for a while until the nurse came to see me. It’s the last day of his round today – tomorrow Isabelle the Nurse begins her round so he reminded me to tell her about the injections that start tomorrow. I can tell that he was pleased that he doesn’t have to do them.

The Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies and I stayed around to sort out a few things. When they returned, we had breakfast and then my friend packed away all of his gear into the car ready to leave.

My cleaner turned up as usual to fit my patches but spent more time saying goodbye to the Hound of the Baskervilles than she did attending to me.

After she left, we did a quick lap around the apartment to make sure that there was nothing left behind, and then we went downstairs to wait for the taxi.

It was my favourite driver today, which was nice, so we said goodbye to everyone and the two of us set off for Avranches.

Just for a change, we were early although it took quite a while to be coupled up. It was Alexi, the baby of the team, who dealt with me today. It’s been a while since I’ve seen her so we had a really good chat to catch up with events.

She told me that she’d just come back from holiday – in Japan – and that her father had bought her an olive tree for the garden at her new house now that she’s finished arranging it.

The bizarre news is that although it’s evident that I have some water retention, the amount of weight to be lost was “nil”. This lack of appetite seems to be having a good effect on my weight.

Alexi set it to 350 grams all the same, but when the doctor came by, he set it to 1kg, so Alexi came back to set it to 1,200. If I can push ahead, I will.

While he was here, I spoke to the doctor about the chemotherapy.

He thinks that fifteen sessions is far too many, so I asked him what he thought about going to the University Hospital at Rennes for the chemotherapy.

They could do the Retuximab at Avranches, but not the overnight chemotherapy. However he seems to know for a fact that they would do it all at Rennes.

The way I see it, it’s four hours in a car to Paris, four hours back that’s killing me off, on top of the treatment itself which is vicious, and the climb up the stairs here which, I hope, will soon be a thing of the past.

The idea about going to Rennes is that it’s only 90 minutes away so it’s far less travelling time. Then, if I’m really feeling dreadful, I can stay for a Wednesday night to recover and then come back on Thursday. And as Avranches is in between Granville and Rennes, I could be thrown out at Avranches for my dialysis on the way past.

That makes much more sense to me.

That’s how the doctor sees it too, and he told me to chat to them at the hospital in Paris about it when I go back for the next session.

Alexi unplugged me and compressed my implant, and when I weighed myself, I was the lowest weight that I have been for several years – only 700 grams above my “non-sporting” target weight and only 5.7 kilos above my athletic weight.

Alexi accompanied me to the taxi to hand the driver my bag, and I was disappointed that I couldn’t persuade her to come home with me to pander to my every whim. "I’ve too much work to do" she said, which I suspected was something of a cop-out.

The driver who brought me home was the one who spends all this time texting on his ‘phone as he drives. He’s going to come a nasty cropper one of these days, and I hope that it’s not when I’m in the car.

My cleaner was waiting for me back here, and she helped me stagger up the stairs into my apartment, and I have never felt less like doing it than today. It took me a whole half-hour to come round afterwards.

Although I wasn’t feeling hungry, I thought that I’d better eat something so I made a handful of pasta with veg and a vegan burger. And it was a struggle to force it all down, even though there wasn’t a lot of it.

So right now, early as it may be, I’m off to bed to sleep the Sleep of the Dead. I need it tonight.

But seeing as we have been talking about losing weight … "well, one of us has" – ed … a girl from Crewe went to the dietician to talk about losing weight.
The dietician told her "it’s not really a problem. Just take three sesame biscuits with a cup of mint tea at mealtimes."
And so the girl goes off home but half an hour later she rings up the dietician
"These sesame biscuits and cup of mint tea" she said. "Do I take them before or after the meals?"