Yes. Still around.

Still a little too round, actually, despite all my best efforts to whittle away the curves with a combination of running, swimming, skipping, and carrying out strange-looking manoeuvres on a so-called lateral stepper (one of my impulse buys, used three or four times in, well, a good couple of months). Nothing, it seems, will take me back to how I was "before WG". But I will not stop trying. My running pal and I, we call ourselves the "special needs" runners. Me, with my drug-induced anaemia, making it much more of a struggle than it used to be, she with her epilepsy, whose seizures can leave her out of action for weeks at a time if they lead to injury. Together, we stumble round Southampton common slowly but surely. Together, we stick our fingers up at our stupid illnesses and, albeit somewhat unathletically, just get on with it.

In work news, following on from this, I proved myself to be far too good at my job and was promoted after six months in the role. When I say promoted, I mean that my manager "strongly encouraged me" to apply for a senior role which had become vacant. Slightly bewildered, I re-did the same aptitude tests that I'd done six months previously and was interviewed by the same interviewers who had interviewed me six months previously. (Is no-one simply promoted any more?)

As a result of my new-found seniority, I have found myself being sucked into the mindset of "caring about work", which always puts me in a curious position. On one hand, I know that my job is essentially pointless in the grand scheme of things. On the other, I am a girly swot, eager to please and desperate to do a good job. And so I excel in the corporate workplace, having senior users fighting over who gets to use me on their ever-so-important projects. And I get paid a little more, which always helps. While inside, I just wonder what it's all for.

The cat continues to delight us. Not a day goes by when we don't laugh at her deranged antics. Now that she spends time outdoors, she has started to bring us the inevitable "presents". So far, a butterfly, an enormous moth and a number of worms have been presented to us, patted about a bit, generally tortured or sometimes eaten. She oscillates between utter aloofness and absolute adoration, depending on whether or not the recipient of her attention (or lack thereof) is holding in their hand one of these (or might do so in the near future).

Her latest obsession is the kitchen sink, which she will peer at, fascinated, for hours on end, listening, eyes wide, to the gurgling of the waste and lapping up any stray droplets of water. Like most cats, she refuses to drink from her dedicated bowl, preferring to take her water in virtually any other context.

My hair is shoulder-length and schizophrenic - curly at the back, barely wavy at the front, so I am back on the straighteners again in a desperate attempt to give it some uniformity. Like my body, I fear I will never have the pre-WG hair back.

And despite that background malaise, that continuing status anxiety, life is good. Big is here. My friends are here. We are healthy and happy. Thank you for asking.