It is, of course, the Orfit mask which until Thursday was used to strap my head tightly to the zapping table at the Beatson, lest the death-rays miss and burn out 1982 instead of cauterising some tumour cavity.
Since it's tailored exactly to my head and of no use to anyone else, the nice people at the radiation station let me take it home after my final session.
Not the most practical of modes of transport, but let's go with it for now.
When he got back, he broke his back…
I'm surprised he made it at all, what with the confectionery-based aircraft and everything.
And that was the end of Crackerjack.
The thing is, I'm getting quite close to the end of my treatment. Next Thursday is my last head-zapping, after which my hair may well start to grow back. So I'm a little reluctant to take the plunge.
Here's the scenario: From the front - things don't look so bad, possibly because I have a freakishly large head which is hard to take in all at once from close up. My left side and top appear fine, my right side a bit oddly thin, like normal male-pattern baldness which has for some reason slipped a bit.
The answer is 'with very little'. But that seems to be working, which surprises no-one more than me.
Boredom, or the fear of it, is what had initially bothered me the most about having all this time on my hands. I find it all too easy to slip into that Sunday afternoon torpor Douglas Adams described as "the long, dark tea-time of the soul", where ennui and inertia combine into urrggh.
I spent most of December with a baldy bit behind my right ear thanks to the spot of light brain surgery I underwent on the first day of advent. It grew back quite quickly, but the rest of it insisted on racing ahead, leaving me looking weirdly unbalanced. More so than usual, I mean.
I'm now into the second full week of my treatment, and I'm starting to feel it, with days where I feel completely washed out and quite sick. I knew to expect this – nausea is the main side-effect of Temozolomide, my particular flavour of chemo, and although it is controlled with anti-emetics I was moved to milder ones after day five, so I anticipated a certain queasiness – but I hadn't anticipated such an impact. The nausea has been mild, but it ruins my concentration and leaves me oddly devoid of ideas. And that is buggering up my day, to be frank.
Two wee boys meet up on Boxing Day.
"So, what did you get, then?"
"I got Monopoly, and a book token, and an orange."
"Oh, right. I got a bike, and an Xbox, and an iPad, and a TV, and a blue-ray player, and…"
"Gosh. Wish I had cancer."
It seems that all you need to do to become the centre of attention at Christmas is to contract a life-threatening medical condition. If I'd realised, I'd have done this years ago.
I realise that at the moment my profession sits somewhere between kitten-blinding and child vivisection in the popularity stakes, and that people currently doubt the integrity and even the skill in what at least some journalists do. But there are skills involved, and I have been very pleased to have them over the last few days.
I've got a hole in my head, I'm wearing a fetching pair of Moll Flanders toeless stockings, and I have a drain up my knob. But I feel pretty good, all things considered.
Obviously, I've had quite a lot of morphine today, which might have something to do with that. And which might also, incidentally, mean I'm writing utter nonsense, or at least more so than usual. But I've just been told I can charge ahead and just use my phone, which means wi-fi for the Android tablet, which means an update here. Hot off the hospital bed.
Ok, that's alienated any readers who didn't grow up watching UK children's TV in the 70s and 80s, not to mention those with taste and discretion.
But it looks like I've got a bit of record breaking to do myself, as it turns out.
The lumpy bit they took out of my head last week is called a glioblastoma. Better out than in, rather like Simon Cowell and a life-raft (thanks to Jo Brand on QI for that one), but not a good thing to have had in my skull in the first place.
I'm aware of the theoretical existence of 5.30am, but I've always tried my best not to prove it in any practical way.
But I need to be in the neurosurgery ward at the Southern General for my little adventure in trepanation at 7am, and I would like to arrive clean and relatively undazed, so a 5.30am start it is.
Without coffee, too. That's going to knack quite a lot. I'm not allowed as much as a glass of water from 2am, so the daily kick-start of an industrial level of caffiene is out.
I've been breaking the news for years - or at least damaging it quite badly - on a professional basis. But this is a bit of a shocking thing to say, something you kind of want to work up to; take the indirect approach. The question is how?
Cryptically? 2 Across: In your loaf, it sounds like a grain bloomer (5,6)
Multiple choice? Which of the following has brain cancer?
A: Me
B: A razor clam
C: Alesha Dixon
