"No no!   'E's just resting.."

Gosh! I recall that we started out together in 2011, when my hat still had lead in its pencil. However, it is now over a year since I wrote my last words about nothing significant or offered up an opionated music review. It is time I offered you Blog and Review Masochists an explanation for my sudden disappearance so long ago. Since then I have mainly confined my musings to checking the racing odds, meandering the Museum of My Life and shouting at bad shit on the television.

Some of you will know that I am of an age where one's list of colleagues slowly shortens as they fall off their perches or forget your name as Dr Alz closes in on them. Even old enough to have danced with your mother at The 100 Club. As I move nearer the front of the queue, as you would expect, I am quite ready for my turn. The empty chasms left in the Blues World by the sad, sudden and recent deaths of the hugely talented Jules Fothergill and Dave Raven have also given me pause for thought.

Curiously, I have had a close relationship with the Black Inevitability of it all since I was young – I had my funeral service planned (with music!) since my twenties – so you could say I am well prepared and have been on Stand-By for decades. You will understand therefore that it has come as something of a surprise to realise that of late I seemed to have joined the 'I really can dodge all the bullets' school of thought and am even musing that I may indeed Live for Ever.

Of course, if this came to pass, I will surely laugh at the dilemma that would face my nearest and dearest. The very idea that I would be lurking about For Ever in my Hat and Drainpipes demanding bacon butties and Stoly and seeking constant attention and supervision - whilst behaving disgracefully - is enough to unsettle even the most devoted relation.

Rumour has it that I have not been wonderfully well for some time. In truth, I have been knackered, pole-axed, banjaxed, inspected, injected, infected, lost my sense of taste, my finger and toe-nails, went weirdly daft bald, hurtily steroid stuffed, bleedingly bled, back-ached, head-ached, leg-ached, chemo-congested, gut scanned, eye-ball scanned, walked wobbly, X-rayed every which way and swallowed enough pills to fill an elephant. I have been up a creek without a paddle or a canoe or a compass. I even spent some time preparing the piano graphics for my cheap cardboard coffin. And That's Just The Edited Version.

I decided a year ago that this was definitely not a subject for a depressing angst-ridden HatBlog so I quickly pulled its hatted plug. Now I will try and explain how I reached this point, how Survivor Guilt is currently poking me in the eye and why I am now wearing a Different Hat.

The reason for this Road to Damascus conversion is not The Hat being perverse – no change there guv.  It has been the long-term overwhelming influence of a rather brilliant, jolly, articulate, smart, realistic, no messing, give 'em both barrels, exotically accented Bavarian NHS consultant who, with her crack team of Macmillan staff, seems to spend most of her waking hours saving lives and keeping people positive and cheerful. I tend to call her my 'Head of Programming' and for over a year now I have felt obliged to do everything she has told me to do and believe every word she has ever said to me – regardless of the many hurty steroid-tinged diversions offering themselves up euphemistically as 'Side Effects'. She and her staff are the epitome of everything that is so uniquely brilliant about the NHS. Excellence with skill, diligence, care and love.

As a result, nowadays, after being surrounded for a year by a battalion of strong, talented and defiantly cheerful women, I feel sufficiently smiley to say that having looked Serious Trouble in the eye for a year and tried hard not to blink or cry with self-pity, I am pretty sure that I have reasons to be cheerful and plan ahead. I have not actually escaped on my motorbike over the wire yet, but the fact that last month Jules and Dave were so cruelly stolen from their loved ones while I am, Inexplicably, still standing, has made me remind myself that I still have a lot to do, kick myself up the arse, get my ducks in a row and buy a new pencil. I have run out of excuses.  I feel I can now even renew my subscriptions to Smart-Arse Monthly and Teach Yourself Punctuation...

So Thank You for indulging me. That was my cover story. I'm pleased you read it. You are therefore warned that the gobby Hatblog, the discerning Hat Reviews, the gossipy HatShorts and the free for all Hat Facebook page may soon be all over you again like a really irritating Literary Rash. Go on...you know you want to.  If you like, you can blame the NHS. As Melissa Etheridge put it so beautifully “I have talked to my angel and she says it's ok”

I do hope you never have need of a genius 'Head of Programming' like mine but in the meantime please fight hard and then harder to support and defend the NHS from those who wish to do it harm.

Pip Pip!

The Blues Man in The Hat.....of course, still with the essentials - a pencil, a pulse and a sense of humour....