All alone

JW and Maite left yesterday evening; our three Catalan visitors the day before, and Maurice and Olivia on the evening of January 1. Their flight from London was cancelled after several delays on Friday night and Singapore Airlines finally decided to put them in an hotel at the airport at 02.00. The replacement flight left at 14.00, 16 hours late.and when they got Singapore, there was another 7 hour wait for the connection to Auckland, during which again they were transferred to an hotel, so at least they got some sleep. Ah, the joys of air travel.

Today I'm preparing for the debate on Sudan and the DRC, which is on Wednesday, and amendments on the Equality Bill for next Monday.

Also, had a routine scan of the aorta at King's this morning, which showed the diameter had increased from 4.75 cm last time (a year ago? to 5.0 cm today. The arithmetic seems to indicate that with aneurysms that are less than 5.5 cm, the risks of surgery are greater than the risks of rupture, though if the increase of 0.25 cm a year continues, the odds would be reversed in two years' time. While there, I took part in a test of a handheld scanner, which is a much cheaper but no less reliable way of measuring the aorta, designed for routine use in GPs' surgeries. The idea is to scan everybody over the age of 65, and refer to hospital patients with enlarged aortas. It would be interesting to see the arithmetic on this process, which could well unearth more candidates for surgery.