This is something I’ve never spoken of before, something no-one knows about me, and perhaps it’s not altogether sensible to say it here and now – I don’t know just how far and wide these posts disseminate.   But I suppose one reason is that I don’t want to go to my grave having everyone think I was a colourless nobody whose life was so mushroom drab and uncooked pastry dreary that I might almost actively welcome slipping silently out of it.  

The truth is – and aren’t there a lot of books, novels of course, which start with an about-to-die old lady, bony fingers clutching the sheets, misty eyes gazing into the fuzzy distance (or should that be fuzzy eyes and misty distance?  No matter.  'Flashback', that's what they're called.)  And no matter that at the moment I cannot even remember one specific one, title or writer (partly because, just lately I’ve buried myself in crime books which, bloody and horrific though they are, seem tame in comparison to what I remember on days when my memory is at its best) because it has to be said that if my life were written it would need to be told as a novel, and even then the narrator might find themselves branded a fantasist.

So perhaps, as I originally thought, it’s best I tell it myself, because, you see ...

Oh.  I’ve apparently run out of time.  

Friday second sentence word:  mushroom