Oh, where are my manners? Do sit down. Pull up a small child.

Incidentally, it's best not to argue with the nursing staff. I find the best course of action is to throw some chocolates in one direction and hurry off in the other while their attention is distracted.

There should be a word for that brief period just after waking when the mind is full of warm pink nothing. You lie there entirely empty of thought, except for a growing suspicion that heading towards you, like a sockful of damp sand in a nocturnal alleyway, are all the recollections you'd really rather do without, and which amount to the fact that the only mitigating factor in your horrible future is the certainty that it will be quite short.

It was nice to hear the voices of little children at play, provided you took care to be far enough away not to hear what they were actually saying.

And when the Patrician was unhappy, he became very democratic. He found intricate and painful ways of spreading that unhappiness as far as possible.

I have, before now, waited for a pen to perform a macro.

If I had been Terry Pratchett the farmer, or Terry Pratchett the dentist, nobody would have paid any attention if I had announced I had Alzheimer's. But there is something fascinating about an author losing the power over words.