Surreal

It's a bright but windy Thursday morning in July. I sit in a doctors room looking at the meek pansies weave and sway in the coastal wind in their exposed position on the window box. The room's quiet. The doctor um's and ah's, tapping her fingers on the desk. She types a short sentence on the computer then turns to ask me some more questions. She stands and asks me to watch her fingers click. She sits back down and looks at me:

'I think you have a brain tumor' she says.

'Oh' I reply. 'Is it bad?'

'Lets hope it's mostly harmless' she answers.

We finish the consultation and I cycle home in the bright sunshine. I watch the wind whipping the long grass in the field. It has a chill that I never felt on the cycle in.

(n.b. I always preferred daisies to pansies. Pansies seem weak and shallow and I personify them to be full of meaningless chatter whereas daisies are stalwartly and resourceful, able to reclaim even the roughest patches of grass for the presentation of their optimistic little faces.)