Fantastic diptych!

Admired in: www.ipernity.com/group/tolerance

Wonderful pair of photos.

Wonderful idea.

I was there in 1966 too. We may well have passed on the slopes.

Yes, we did, if I recall. I had a Dixons gadget bag slung over my shoulder with a tripod slung across it, and was wearing flimsy street shoes. Yet with all that I managed to find my way, on my own, on foot, there and back from Netley House, Gomshall, where I was staying. I just had a 'Geographia Rambler's Map' (a simplified and near-useless alternative to an OS map) and no compass.

If you'd stopped and told me that I'd be climbing the tower and posing like that again in 60 years time, I'd have thought you mad.

I was wearing my favourite denim sneakers and carrying a little telescope in a denim shoulder bag with badges on it. If you'd thought me mad, you would not have been far wrong..

I never had denim shoulders; it wasn't in my jeans. (-:

But I still have the very camera (which I bought in 1963) with which I took that, and all its clip-on accessories, and even the same cheap gadget bag which I last used in the late 1960's. Even the tripod could still be in some cupboard here. And I've just bought, online, a surviving copy of the same North Downs "Rambler's" map.

For old time's sake I could climb up Leith Hill tomorrow carrying the whole lot, but doing that would restore none of my lost youth.

I bet the secondhand map cost a lot more than the original.

You bet. After (over-hurriedly) ordering it on online, I looked and found that I still had the original one, bought in 1966:

The price (printed on the cover) - 2/6. On eBay I paid £7.49 - almost exactly 60 times that.

Yesterday afternoon I spent 3 hours in Charing Cross Hospital having a full-body PET scan - my second in just over 2 years. Just like then, on arrival the radiology nurse asked me: "Do you know why you're here?", as though I were some demented dotard who might not. Afterwards, it being a fine evening, I walked by the river from Hammersmith to Kew Bridge and from there got a bus home.

I was (metaphorically and literally) taking advantage of some late-afternoon sun.

Reflecting the subtle attractiveness of printed products from that era, quietly enticing one to purchase, without any garishness.

I hope your scan has produced a favourable result. The nurse was acting correctly in asking that question, as she could not be expected to know your IQ just by looking at you. Some patients genuinely don't know why they're there and need things explaining to them.

Such explanation might have helped me twelve years ago, when I attended an 'autonomic unit' for four days of tests, which the doctor had not explained to me. It was only when the results were later relayed to me that I discovered it was actually a cardiovascular unit and that I had unwittingly undergone cardiovascular tests which had nothing to do with my condition!

1. Agreed.

2a. I'll get the scan results later this month. They will show something (my PSA isn't doubling every 3 months for no reason).

2b. Is my appearance indistinguishable from that of a dimwitted, demented dotard?

3. At least it eliminated any previously undiagnosed cardiovascular condition.

2a. Fingers crossed.

2b. Yes.

3. Wrong. It simply showed I didn't have any of the conditions they were testing me for, though it did show an unsuspected heart arrhythmia, which they mentioned in the small print but otherwise ignored. This became troublesome six years later, but I've managed to cure it with CoQ10.

That's great. There may be gender-specific variants - CoQ10 and HeN10.

On Monday I had 'flu and Covid booster jabs, and my arms are still sore. At the same time I had a 24-hour BP monitor fitted (that squeezes the upper arm hard for 50 seconds every 30 minutes) which didn't help. Results in due course. Yesterday I was notified by email that the PET scan result has come through and can be accessed online. I haven't opened the link because whether the news is (relatively) good or bad, nothing will be done until after the consultation and in the meantime I'm better off not knowing.

Maybe not a good idea to keep having covid jabs,
but I know you won't listen to me on that one.

I can understand your reluctance to open that link on your own.
How soon will you see the consultant?

1. I'm not qualified to judge. Whether it's advisable or not may differ with different patients.

2. On the 22nd. If the result is in the form of raw data, it will require professional interpretation and explanation, without which it may cause undue alarm. Hence pro tem I'm better off not knowing and thinking as little as possible about it.