Although it was not one of the archive tracks that he played in this show, I remembered that one of his big hits was "I Don't Believe in Miracles".
I don't either but we thought we were witnessing one this weekend.
Whilst we were on holiday we were concerned about Marie's mother (from a confusing telephone conversation) and Marie phoned the doctor on Thursday morning who said he would visit her (she is very immobile and housebound). We went on one of our favourite walks and near the end (several miles from our car) we got word that she had been admitted to hospital with a suspected stroke (she had a serious one in 1989). By the time we got back to our holiday flat it was too late to return to the Isle of Man that day - in any event we did not anticipate the gravity of events the following day.
We looked at all sorts of ways of getting Marie back ahead of our planned Saturday return but she preferred that we went together which meant that we had to get the hire car back to Bristol but there were no flights to the Island on Friday. On Friday morning we made the 4 hour car drive to Bristol then went by train to Birmingham from where we flew in the evening. We got to the hospital by 9 pm and left after 1 am. She had got progressively worse through the day and was close to a coma. We were expecting to lose her quite soon.
She surprised everyone by talking in the morning, then showing signs of movement and although not recognising us, she spoke to us (in an understandably confusing way) in the afternoon. By that evening she did recognise us and by this evening the nurses had lifted her into a chair.
Ben came home on the Friday evening ferry (returning this evening) and it has been a fairly traumatic weekend for the family and all its extensions with lots of phone calls not least telling Robbie first the bad news and then the good news. Mollie Watson is 87 and is the last surviving member of the Quirks at Lambfell - she had four brothers and a sister.
Mollie is well know for her giggles and she gave us plenty today - after lots of tears beforehand It appears likely that she did not have a stroke after all but a severe virus that mimicked the symptoms of a stroke. The antibiotics in her drip had mimicked a miracle.
Under the circumstances, I didn't go running yesterday for only the fourth day since the London Marathon and the website has been put on hold. And I have about 20 hours of athletics to watch - and work tomorrow!
Bear with me and I will catch up with some of the things I planned for the website.
85th birthday in 2009
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