A wise friend observed this week, “since June 1st it’s been raining shit around here.”

This was in reference the raft of crappy family news we’ve been party to recently. Illness, job-loss, humiliation, you name it.

The culmination of the bad news was when a close family member over here had a heart attack earlier this week. It was totally unexpected, resulted in emergency surgery, and spooked us all (including him).

He’s doing ok now, but still in ICU.

Being now almost fully “acclimatized” to American culture, my first thought was “I hope their health cover is ok”…

For Christ’s sake Britain, cherish the NHS! Fight against all of the private financing cancer, because it’s a slow and painful death.