No salted caramel macarons for me, then

Well. Today I went to Hutt Street on a follow-up visit to the nice surgeon who removed my gall bladder and, while he was in there, (gulp) biopsied (is that a verb?) my liver.

The good news is that there is no new bad news about the liver, and that everything that was eating at my innards has now been surgically removed and is healing up nicely. The bad news is assorted: (a) that gallstones can in fact form in the bile duct, so there's no guarantee that I won't grow more, and (b) the confirmation that the condition of my liver is not at all what it should be (NB this has nothing to do with drinking, so there) and if ignored and neglected could easily lead to something called non-alcoholic cirrhosis, which is exactly like alcoholic cirrhosis except that you didn't have any fun. And cirrhosis -- well, you know.

Now Hutt Street, as Adelaideans know, is an excellent place to have coffee and cake. I had coffee. No cake, no biscuits, no gorgeous French patisserie and absolutely, positively no salted caramel macarons. Not today, not next week, and only very occasionally as a special treat ever again. Sugar, fat and alcohol, formerly three of my main food groups, are off the menu for the foreseeable.

The bright side is that if I take this seriously, as who would not, then my days as a traditionally built lady might be numbered. Goddess knows I'm already ten kilos less traditionally built than I was when this all hit the fan two months ago. It could be the start of a whole new look.

An important anniversary

When I was seventeen it seemed that most Australian adults were smokers, or at least most of the ones I knew. Both of my parents smoked and had since they were teenagers in uniform. And like my friend J, I took it up myself in the November of 1970 when we were studying for our matric oh all right Year 12 exams, in my case because it was a preferable alternative to the absent-minded stress-induced scarfing up of biscuits while I tried without much success to get cell division, irregular French verbs, the battle of Thermopylae and the European revolutions of 1848 straight in my head.

I became a seriously dedicated smoker and remained that way for nearly two decades, except for one interlude in 1983-4 when I gave up in order to spare the person I was living with at the time.

What with all the excitement and fanfare and brouhaha of the federal election this time last year, I clean forgot to notice the anniversary of a day that changed, and very likely saved, my life. And this year it's even more significant than it was last year. Because as of approximately 3.30 am tomorrow morning (I was sitting up at the kitchen table drinking and fighting with someone about the SA election of November 25 1989, which Labor controversially won by a shred of a whisker), which was the last time I smoked a cigarette, I will have been a non-smoker for longer than I was a smoker.

Actually I'm not a non-smoker. I am a recovering smoker.