Janet's blog

 I refer you to 'The treatment conversation I and II' way back in the day... Entangled Lives by Melvyn Sheldrake was a welcome Christmas present. I haven't got far into it but have already gone down a fascinating wormhole after reading that paclitaxel is made by fungi living in the yew trees. The fungi are endophytes (living inside plants) and it would appear there are loads of them.  It seems that both the yew tree and some or all of the fungi living there are making the compound. It also seems that there are a lot of fungi living there. One study found 150 fungal species in common yew in Iran, a Chinese study found 81 species with at least three producing paclitaxel, another Chinese study found 528 'strains' of endophytic fungi in  In 2015 Science Direct summarised an article from Current Biology about this -  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215011793 . Yews grow in a way that should leave them particularly open to wood-degrading fungi;...

It was a long morning and then it turned into a long afternoon. I made the Macmillan Centre by bike at 8:36 for bloods before a 9:15 appointment. I am not proud of this, but most days I only get up around 9. It certainly makes an early start somewhat painful. Vaccine Thursday went well I hope. Arm muscle felt as if badly strained for a couple of days and I didn't have much oomph over the weekend but things are improving. I did an hour on the bike yesterday including some hills (Wildwood Road was quite nice), but sadly this was mostly as an alternative to the C25K - my knees are giving me jip. This is a bit disappointing and slightly demoralising after the flying (ha!) start. I thought I had gotten away with it until session 3, when ankles and knees felt really stiff for both the walking and the running. It's possible that it isn't so much the C25K as the Nordic Walking I did in between sessions 2 and 3, or the increased cycling, or all three. In any case, the running must b...

 Many years ago, but as a grown up, I heard a joke that made me fall about uncontrollably. It's worn off a bit now, but I still think of it as  my favourite.  And there it was, in print (?) as I toiled home from my appointment on 19 January. What a treat! Try to read the first line on its own first. And ignore the third line - that looks like an advert... and if you need me to explain the joke ...