I nearly didn’t spot it. After all, it is a pale yellow on a dirty white. I only noticed because of the rug. The rug was darker.

It’s another thing.

It’s about not being able to hold on for a few moments. It’s about kidney failure. It’s about a general deterioration.

It doesn’t smell. It’s nearly time.

I can’t get angry. Inside I weep for him, the same way as I weep for him when, a few minutes later I go to the lounge and he gets confused and goes to the bathroom to ‘follow me’. He gets confused quite often now. Senile dementia, I suppose. It goes with the general failing of everything else.

But this latest is the latest sign; the latest failure. I suppose it means that soon he will start to smell of piss as it comes through his skin. Just like an old person. Which I understand much better now.

I sat stroking his skull last night. I say ‘skull’ rather than ‘head’ since now, that’s what it is. No extra fat anywhere, even on his head. Just skin and bones, as they say – but they are right, whoever they are.

We are supposed to have booked the holiday by now. We’re going to the same place as last year because ‘it will be nice for the dogs’. I don’t say ‘you mean the dog’. I don’t need to remind him. He can see it every day anyway. I don’t think he will be good with this even if he has only known him for 18 months.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not easy for me either but I know it is the way things are.

F said, the other day, that I was not like most Taureans. I am not so ‘bloody minded’, like him. I am, as I said at the time, easy going. Life is tough enough without having to fight everything. Fight the things worth fighting for, I think.

And this? Well this is inevitable and foreseen and all we do now, F, me and him is to wait. Wait for the time that I now know I will know when it arrives. It might be soon, I think.

Still, I still weep a little inside for the signs that keep coming.