Not me, the endowment policy I took out 24 years and 11 months ago when I bought my first house, a two-bed mid-terrace (what is nowadays termed a town house!) just outside Derby for the sum of £18,995.  Hard to believe such house prices exsited, but back then they did; back then it was (just) possible for a single female graduate engineer to get a foot onto the base of the property ladder.  Had I stayed in Derby, had I stayed in that house, next month I would have owned it outright.  A strange thought!  Back then 25 years seemed forever and 48, well, old.

Since I took out that policy there has been all the hooha about endowments, about how they couldn't meet their targets.  Since then I moved, bought and sold another house (bought at £31,500, sold eleven years later at £40,500 having spent more than 10k on improving it in the meantime...) and now live, by the grace of God, in a beautiful manse, the price of which I am embarrassed to contemplate.  In between I paid mortgage interest at about 18% - how many people have long forgotten that - and seen house prices rise and fall.  A lot has happenned indeed.

What struck me though, was the final valuation I've been given... it would have comfortably covered my original mortgage, not with huge profits, but with enough to have a holiday or buy a new suite of furniture of somesuch.  I was not wrongly sold a bad policy.  Despite the fact that investments can go down and well as up, it always remained 'on target'.  I am glad I retained this endowment, even though during the living by faith years of college it was hard to find the monthly premium.  Glad not just because it means I have some money to reinvest for the future but glad because it vindicates the decision I took all those years ago as a far more naive person, just setting out into adulthood and being the first person in her family to own property, so without the experience of parents to draw on.  Glad, too, because it shows that what I was told all those years ago was right - investments go up and down, interest rates go up and down, but with a long term investment things even out.

Scottish Equitable, the company with whom I had the policy no longer exists, having been taken over last year, but there's a nice kind of irony in that company name... who'd have guessed 25 years ago the girl buying her first house in the English midlands would see the policy mature as somone living in Scotland?

By the way, if anyone now thinks I'm wealthy, think again; I'm definitely not worth marrying or bumping off for my money!!

Sorry, to go all Greek yet again, and probably wonky Greek at that.

Tetelestai... it is finished, accomplished, done, completed

Elpio - I hope, I am hoping

Amen - truly, so be it.

By the time this appears online the last zap will have been delivered and I will have verily skipped out of the front door of the nuking centre all the way to the railway station with a stupid grin on my face.

It is accomplished - the nine months process is completed, signed off, done and dusted.

It is accomplished, I hope - the nine month process seems to have been successful.

It is accomplished, I am hoping - it is done now, and I am choosing to live that completion, to have hope as 'eschatological anticipation', not pretending this did not happen, but aiming at the new creation, the promise of eternity and seeking to glimspe more of that in the here and now.

Amen, so be it.

Tetelestai.  Elpio.  Amen.

Just had an email from A to say her Min Rec commitee had unanimously endorsed her call and commended her for training.  Hurrah!  Hallelujah!

Maybe as well as being called to churches with building issues I am part of something God is doing to bring more women into ministry in Scottish Baptist life?

More cartwheels (metaphorical) around my house.  I look forward to meeting A in real life very soon. 

And A, you'll get invites to preach at the Gathering Place, be sure of that!

Today was the penultimate 'stepping stone' and tomorrow I will finally 'break free' from the nuking chamber.  As I am heading south immediately I am 'done' there will be no real time post tomorrow (advance post already prepared!) and this corner of blogworld will be quiet for a few days.

I just wanted to mention J and Mrs J (I know one only by her first name and the other only by her formal name) who have shared much of the river traverse with me.  As it happens they both finish 4 working days behind me.  J is roughly my age - possibly a little younger - whilst Mrs J is a good bit older.  They have been such lovely travelling companions for this last phase, always laughing, always positive, always ready for a conversation.  As I left this morning Mrs J said 'so, it'll be a wee hug tomorrow then', to which I replied, 'absolutely!'

A few other people to mention in passing.  There's C from Oban, roughly a week ahead of me, who always looked so lovely in her co-ordinated scarves and outfits.  There's Mrs D who was having some palliative radiotherapy for secondaries to a very rare form of brain cancer.  There is Mrs C who today, for the first time 'dared to bare' her regrowing hair (and looked pretty funky it must be said!).  There's the lady who gets treated early on the days she has to catch the ferry home (suggesting today was her final 'zap').  There's the RC lady who overlapped with me by just a few days as I began.

It has been an interesting experience, and I am fortunate to have had almost no side effects... yes, I've re-named myself Robyn, yes I have a perfect square of exit burning on my back and yes, I had some nausea in the early stages, but my energy levels have stayed up throughout (one tired evening and one tired morning) and I feel well.

As I perch on my stepping stone, with the river bank tantalisingly close, it is strange to think that this time tomorrow it will all be over and I will be officially moving in to the phase of 'living beyond breast cancer'.

I have a cold.  Normally no great cause for comment.  But it is actually nice to have something 'normal'  - a cold - rather than something alarming like febrile neutropenia (which I thankfully never experienced) or an infection requiring immediate A&E action.

I think the signficance struck me on Saturday night when I felt the cold beginning and checked my temperature - absolutely normal - and recalled the last time this occured, in January, having a temperature of 38.5 and spending half a day at A&E before being given strong antibiotics.

Just a cold!  A nuisance, as it means I can't visit my sick people in their hospitals.  A nuisance as it means I sniff and sneeze and cough, and am conerned in case I do any of these at the wrong moment of the zapping process.  A nuisance, but a nice, normal, ordinary kind of nuisance.

I'm guessing I may be more susceptible to colds, etc. for a while having had my immune system hammered at the back end of last year, but at least I can now fight them off like anyone else.

Just a cold... hurrah!