The dverse prompt is in the form of a letter, addressed to someone in particular from a particular place. The only thing I could think of  was a few words of heartfelt sympathy for Finbar who has had the trauma of a minor operation and having to wear an awful plastic lampshade.

I rarely write letters, so little to say, and what there is interests no one but me. I never write to you, friend, because you can’t read, and even in the spoken words there is room for doubt. But I want you to know that the pain will go, like the soreness of the stitches, and that the indignity of the lampshade cone, the leaving you with unknowns and the drugged sleep were part of the pattern of life that is never smooth but necessary and to be borne stoically, with canine fortitude.

Lying here with your long…