We’re twelve days into the New Year – 2010 – Kubrick’s space odyssey hasn’t happened nine years after it should’ve. Humans are still grounded on earth. Virgin will fly you through the Stratosphere where any person, who can afford a sizable house in Sydney’s inner city, can float free from gravity for a few minutes. But no, Earth is still our main residence. What a job we’re currently doing folks: paying an extra $2 per plane ticket to minimize our carbon footprints in the sky, political argy-bargy on minimising emissions and many countries experiencing extreme weather conditions – from snow covering all of England to catastrophic fire warnings in South Australia.

I may think globally, but my world is still very much local. I’ve resumed cancer treatments. Right now I visit the oncology day unit more often than when I underwent chemotherapy: for Zoladex injections (menopause maker) once a month, regular echocardiograms to check the drugs aren’t compromising my heart functioning, and IV Herceptin every three weeks to suppress the HerII protein that my particular brand of breast cancer likes for breakfast.

These visits fall on different days. Last year Friday was chemo day and Brett took our son for the day. So now I take Felix with me. He gets a lot of attention from the nurses. Plus, my fellow patients engage with me in a way they wouldn’t if the subject wasn’t babies – mainly their own and their own’s own (i.e. grandchildren). He’s a bit of babbling sunshine and normalcy in a place where people are going through really difficult stuff and feeling sick along the way.

Right now he’s asleep. I just finished Larson’s Millennium trilogy (great fun). I loved the heroine Salander as a character. What we all would give for a photographic memory. My hair has come back greyer and thicker. Right now I have a faux Mohawk ala Beckham. I’m eating well. I feel good, really good in fact.