Have no fear, I would not be so trite as to blog about my thoughts on what to have for breakfast (a slimmer’s egg, bacon and tomato – no toast – if you’re interested); but no, that isn’t what I particularly want to impart this morning. Actually, after the phone conversation with my lovely husband Chris, and after I had started grilling the rasher of bacon and tomato, for some weird reason I began to think about God and death; perhaps that’s a normal thing to do – it seems strange to me now. I don’t even know what triggered my line of thought. I wasn’t thinking about my own death; in fact, I was thinking about an acquaintance I had not seen for several years and met again almost immediately prior to my departure for Australia…

We met in my doctor’s surgery as I was leaving and she was going in. I hardly recognised Jeanette. Formerly a good looking woman with high colour, a sparkle in the eyes and an excellent figure, she was now ashen, thin as a rake and had a desperate look in her sunken dark eyes. She wore a woolly hat like a huge tea cosy as if to keep in every skerrick of heat and to deter the slightest puff of wind that might make her fall over had she not been supported by her two daughters at either side of her; it was the hat that I had noticed at first glance upon re-entering the waiting room, and then the sad eyes beneath the hat, and the look of recognition that beckoned me towards her.

“You look ill, Jeanette,” I said softly to lesson the truth.

She nodded her assent.

“At least I have my girls with me,” she said, and I was reminded that her handsome younger second husband had left her quite a few years ago and she was probably without a third.

I hugged her and hoped that any healing power in my hands might help her.

“I’ll pray for you,” I whispered in her ear as I kissed her good-bye.

I knew it sounded an odd thing to say, especially as I’m not a religious person.

“Thank you,” Jeanette replied. (She seemed not to mind my manner of expression.)

In the last two months I have thought about Jeanette quite often, and prayed for her in my way – hoped there is a God and asked for her return to good health – but I don’t know how she is. We are just acquaintances and I don’t even know her surname.

Do you sometimes think about people you used to see regularly, and suddenly realise that you haven’t seen them for ages, and then wonder what happened to them? Usually we think the worst – don’t we? Well, mostly we are justified but sometimes, happily, there are surprising outcomes…

The second last time I saw Nicole, a friendly acquaintance whose portrait I painted in the days before I was married to Chris, she was on a stretcher being taken in to the local hospital. She looked like death and I then I didn’t see her around any more. All these years since I have worried that the poor girl had passed away. Imagine my delight last November when, having just attended my niece’s wedding, I bumped into Nicole walking through the churchyard. The pretty blonde was as pleased to see me as I was to see her and we embraced, kissed and laughed about my concern over her. What a happy wedding day that was.

I hope and pray (even though I’m not really very religious) that when I return to dear old Dawlish I will bump into Jeanette in the street one day and I will be sure to rib her about that terrible old hat she wore at the surgery when she was under the weather…