Pond life

On a more positive note I seem to have three surviving newts in the pond. They were sunbathing under the lily leaf today! I also have a pond full of dragon fly larvae, which is not so good!

One final National Health Service moan

There was just one more thing that irritated me when I was trying to sort out my mum. The hospital wanted the full name of her GP as the person who referred her was a trainee and their computer didn't recognise him. Well, she has seen several different GPs so she didn't know which one was hers. When I called in to the practice earlier I was given a card with the contact details of her GP on it so I naturally got that out. True, it did have the name and address of the practice and a phone number, but there were no names for the doctors on it. One side was full of advertisements for a Massage therapist (no details of qualifications given, just a name and phone number- could have been any kind of massage) Asian Funeral Care Ltd (not very reassuring), a Shiatsu and Counselling Service (although it didn't say what sort of counselling) and an advert for the people who published the card. Now, I do understand that in parts of the National Health Service it is necessary to generate income, but for me this kind of advertising is a bridge too far. It does state that the practice in no way endorses the things it advertises but I don't think that would stop people thinking that if it is on a card that they got from the doctors then it must be okay. Additionally, the very information that is important is missing. I wonder who advises them on the ethical implications of their actions.

Hospital parking moans 2

I took my mum to her clinic appointment yesterday (she can only walk a few steps so public transport is out of the question). It cost £2.00 for two hours and as her appointment went on longer than I thought I had to put another £2.00 in, costing £4.00 in total. Mind you, I was really lucky to get a parking spot at all as it was very busy. She was later admitted to another hospital 8 miles away. I drove her there thus saving the NHS the cost of an ambulance. I was happy to do that for her but what I was not so happy about was being charged another £4.00 to park in the same NHS Trust. I read with irritation all the notices about using public transport to access the hospital. I am the first to agree with the principal but many people visiting hospitals are sick, or are taking someone who is sick, or trying to visit a relative or friend who is sick and they are stressed, in a hurry, trying to do it and still carry on with their daily lives and do not have time to visit the Transport for London website to work out the best route!

My mother's feet

The problem with my mother's knees spread to her feet. They became so swollen that she could barely place them on the ground and walking a few steps was a problem. She was seen yesterday by a rheumatologist and suddenly the picture is beginning to fall into place. I was diagnosed with mixed connective tissue disease two years ago. It is an condition where your immune system malfunctions and rather than dealing with all the normal everyday germs and cells it destroys the healthy ones instead. These illnesses can present in a variety of ways, but in my case I had many minor symptoms such as joint aches and pains and major problems with my lungs, kidneys and blood clotting. There is some sort of genetic predisposition to these illness but I never expected my mother to develop something similar as the diseases are relatively rare and usually present in younger people (my mother is 76). Anyway, it seems that is exactly what she has got and her swollen feet are most likely caused by the fact that her kidneys are leaking protein. She was admitted to hospital yesterday and will likely be in the hospital while we move her stuff and empty her house at the weekend. It is going to be quite a time!

Terry Wogan

Last week I went for a brief visit to Limerick. I am going to be an examiner for the course there and I just went over to meet everyone. The flight to Limerick is one hour but the journey to Heathrow airport from my house takes 3 hours and you have to be there at least an hour and a half before the plane takes off so it takes pretty much the whole day! On top of that, my flight was an hour late leaving so I spent a lot of time sitting in the airport! Coming back was no better. I was dropped off at Shannon airport in good time and then waited for three hours as my flight was delayed due to an earlier incident at Heathrow, weather and probably also the arrival of an important visitor. Two police motor cyclists and a limousine were waiting for the flight. I saw a friendly looking chap also waiting and I said to him 'you probably can't tell me who it is that's arriving can you?' He smiled and said 'well you will hear him every morning on your English radio'. I guessed correctly that it was Terry Wogan and had plenty of time to organise this photo of him! He is apparently from the Limerick area and was on his way to be made a freeman of the city! I found some interesting opinions from local people on this decision on the Limerick blog page

http://www.limerickblogger.org/blog/?p=3048

The discussion below sums up the divided opinion!

"Fuck Terry Wogan, he turned his back on Limerick years ago. Give the honour to someone that deserves it"

"Lots of people left Limerick (including myself) to find work, we were hardly turning our back on the city, just looking for work. He could hardly have made it to the top of broadcasting if he stayed in Limerick. Did you expect him to stay here and co host a show with Tom Ryan? Bill Whelan, Delores O Riordan, the Mc Courts, Ciarain Mc Mathuna, Kate O Brien, Dickie Harris, Catherine Hayes, could they have made it in the city of knockers?"



"... I agree that lots of people left Limerick to better their lives and careers.
You seem to have missed my point completely. The point I'm making is that unlike most of the other people you mentioned he rarely acknowledged his roots in Limerick and rarely if ever promoted the city.
Yet the powers that be want to honour him when it seems all he if did for Limerick was to turn his back on the place. Lots more deserving people than him for the award.
He probably wouldn't know where Limerick is now anyway"

A surprise in the driveway

Writing the last post reminded me of another time when the past caused quite a surprise to some poor builder. The people that owned the house that backs on to my mother's decided to lay a new driveway and engaged a firm of builders to do the work. They set to with their digger to remove the old concrete drive but had to stop rather suddenly when they unearthed a hand grenade! The area was sealed off, the bomb disposal squad called and the offending item was eventually removed and disposed of. No one could explain how it got there except my mother who remembered that during the war the man who was living there at the time had brought the grenade home with him on leave from the army and had given it to his wife in case there was an invasion and she needed it to defend herself. (Quite what she would do with it I don't know, but I guess people were very scared) Fortunately, it was never needed but as it was obtained illegally the man didn't know quite what to do with it after the war ended. He told my grandfather that he eventually decided to bury it in his new drive. (My mother remembered this because she remembered my grandfather saying that it was a bl**dy stupid thing to do!)

My mother's house

My grandparents bought the house where my mother now lives in about 1930, when it was just built. It was part of the development of the London suburbs and people like my grandfather, from poorer parts of London, saw it as a way to move out to a more peaceful environment and at last own their own home. (Prior to that my grandparents lived in rented accommodation in Camden Town, which is now trendy and desirable but then was rough and definitely a down-market move for my grandmother!) They moved when my mother was a toddler and lived there all through my mother's childhood. The houses had big gardens and all the neighbours grew their own vegetables, the children played together outside and all walked to the local school together. My mother was 11 when the war started and for a while they stayed in the house and continued as normal. There was an Anderson shelter built in the back garden and when the air raid sirens sounded the whole family trouped into the garden and slept semi-underground. Sometimes neighbours shared shelters to make it more bearable. (In a hot, dry summer a strange bare patch appears on the lawn outlining the foundations of the shelter as most people just covered them over with soil after the war ended.) My mother talks about how scared she was when she heard the sirens, and at one point things must have been quite bad as embedded in the floorboards in the front bedroom is a piece of shrapnel that flew through the roof during an air raid. For some time my mother and grandmother were evacuated and lived in Shropshire while my grandfather stayed at home, but this did not seem to last long and they all returned before the end of the war. The house and family survived and my mother lived there until she got married at the age of twenty eight. For a couple of years she lived with my father in a rented flat above the shop where he worked but then I came along and it got a bit cramped. At this point my grandparents decided to retire to live by the sea and sold the house back to my mother and father at a 'family rate', which is the only way they were able to afford their own home. I moved there when I was about 2 years old and shortly after my sister and then my brother arrived to make it a busy and noisy family home. (It only had three small bedrooms so I shared with my sister while my brother had a 'box' room to himself). We played in the garden, met friends in the street, charged round on our bikes and went to the same school that my mother went to as a child. One by one we grew up, left home and then returned to live there for brief periods after travelling, when relationships broke up, in between house moves etc! My mother and father continued to live there happily until he died 22 years ago and since then my mother has lived there alone. Over time the house has got sadder; the decoration is faded and grubby, the electrics are dangerous, the plumbing no longer works, the roof needs replacing and the garden has got overgrown. This combined with my mother's knees has led her to finally decide to move and she has a buyer for the house and a new home in a retirement apartment close to my sister. All being well she will leave the house for good in 2 weeks and the house will leave our family the week after. I hope it will be in good hands.

My shopping list

I was watching TV Saturday and there was a conversation about what people in the future may want to know about us. The debate went something like they would bombarded with information about our technology, poems, achievements etc through the Internet but the details of our everyday lives, such as what we ate and what we bought would be lost. In order to make sure that there is a record of the mundane bits of my life I am adding the details of a shopping list I found in my bag! Feel free to read no further as this is really for the benefit future generations!

organic juice
fresh milk (6litres)
Vanilla Ice cream
Britvic J2O (2 packs of 4- a fruit juice drink)
8 salmon fillets
Lurpak spread (Like butter)
Anchor Spread (also like butter)
Olive oil
Romaine lettuce
Raspberry Vinegar
Organic bread
A bunch of tulips
1 lime
1 red pepper
2 lemons
1 cantaloupe melon
Penne Pasta (packet)
Organic spring onions
Baby new potatoes
Tomatoes on the vine
Organic cherry tomatoes (reduced price)
1 litre coca cola
Blueberries
raspberries
bananas (2.95kg)
1 avocado
1 bottle thick bleach
coriander
dill

The total bill was £48.87 and the shopping was for a meal for 6!

Part 2 of strange dream

I found out from my neighbours that on the day that the lady next door set fire to her house she went down to the hospital to ask for help and to be admitted. (She is well known as she has a long history of self harm). She told them that if she wasn't allowed to stay in she was afraid that when her husband went to work that night she would set fire to the house. She was sent home and after dropping off her baby at her mothers she went back to her house and did exactly what she had threatened earlier. She is now locked up somewhere on remand, miles away from her family. I don't know whether she does have a treatable mental illness and whether she should have been admitted but from my point of view she obviously was a serious risk to herself and others and my understanding of the mental health act is that that is the criteria for admission. Perhaps someone made a wrong judgement or perhaps I don't know the full story but whatever the truth the consequence is that she is probably now in about the worst place she could be for her and her family.

Return of my mother's knees

My mother's knees have also returned. Well, in fact they have been with us all this time, getting worse and worse. She has been getting quite fed up with them as in addition to the knees she is feeling stiff and tired and generally not able to do too much. When she has been sitting for any length of time she has great difficulties moving and the pain seems quite unbearable. She is not normally a depressed person but this has really begun to get her down. She has decided to move to a retirement flat and has sold her house (another story for another time) but has basically spent the best part of three months back and forth to her doctor trying to find out what is wrong. It seems at last that they are thinking beyond just wear and tear in her knees and she is in the middle of a series of tests and investigations so hopefully there will be some answers soon. I did some thinking about her symptoms, some searching on the Internet and together with my professional knowledge and my own experience of a rheumatic disease and think she may have polymyalgia rheumatica. When I read out the symptoms to her she could identify with several of them. The thing she was most happy about was the bit that said that polymyalgia was treatable with corticosteroids and treatment may bring almost immediate relief! I can remember how I felt after my first infusion of intravenous steroids when I was first ill. I got up the next morning and for the first time in months could lift my arms up in the shower without it hurting. The relief was amazing and I would love for my mother to get that feeling.

Return of the ladies who don't get their hair wet

Well, not so much their return as my return to them. Life and 'getting out of the habit' has kept me away from them for a while but today I made the effort and went swimming. They were on form. I walked in to a positive revolution as they were complaining about the fact that on Wednesday mornings there is now a triathlon club from 6.45 and 'there were five people per lane'. Even more upsetting to the ladies was that 'there's all that splashing..I mean they don't just do a gentle backstroke'. I must admit when I went in it was a bit busier than usual but by 8.00am the pool was virtually empty again. I have never been able to work out why the ladies, who must be of an age now where they don't need to work, just don't come a little later after the morning rush has subsided. After swimming they took up their usual seat in the club room and drank their tea!

The role of the marshall

We found out the other week that our role as a volunteer marshall at the Tour de France really involves a lot of standing. We arrive somewhere remote at some very early time of day and stand all day telling people how to get to the nearest toilet! If there is anything nasty to do we put up our hand and someone who is being paid comes over and does it. We get a medal, a bottle of water and some sun screen for our troubles! We mustn't take photos, talk on our mobiles, listen to iPODs etc! Mind you, we do get the chance to be part of the biggest sporting event in the world. (Yes.. true.. more spectators worldwide than the world cup!)

Cat wars

There seem to be few cat wars going on around here. Mandi, my very neurotic and slightly strange cat, got beaten up the other week and now every time he sees another cat in the garden runs in and hides down the back of the kitchen cabinets. Next door has a lively black cat called kit-cat who tries to get in and get his share of dinner when he can and on the other side there is a tabby called puss-puss who is rather put out at the arrival of a dog in his home and spends time sitting on my windowsill and staring in (much to the annoyance of Mandi and Norma who hiss and spit providing the glass separates them from him). Then, there is the black cat with the scabby skin condition, the thin black and white un-neutered tom and the big bruiser black and white tom that all appear in my garden. There are three other cats that look suspiciously like the tom cats, a very fluffy multi-coloured cat, a fluffy white one, a chocolate point cat and British blue shorthair called Oscar (although we don't see so much of him since he had his balls removed!). At least 4 of these cats see my cat-flap as the snack stop to keep them going on route and while they are at it pee up the wall so I know they have been there! There is a lot of territorial negotiating going on at the moment and most of it is in my back garden! Also in my back garden on the newly dug out flower bed is the communal cat toilet!

A wet bank holiday

My mother always said that the weather in May is unpredictable. My sister was born in the middle of May in a heatwave and 2 years and 2 weeks later my brother was born into a frost! This was 45 years ago and despite global warming this May has been the same. In London on Monday the temperature didn't get higher than 7 Celsius! So, we had a 'typical' bank holiday weekend. On Saturday, the nicest and sunniest day, Ian got out the hedge cutter and shredder and we attacked my overgrown hedge. We made good progress with the trimming and then started to shred the remains to use a mulch. It turned drizzly and Ian was hungry and the shredder seemed to be playing up so he went out to do a final bit of shredding while I made lunch. I was just finishing off the sandwiches when the shredder cut out and Ian came running across the garden holding his hand. A stick had been kicked back out of the shredder and sliced into his hand and for once he wasn't wearing gloves! It looked OK at first although he turned a bit grey and felt faint. We covered it up but when I looked at it later to clean it realised it was a bit deeper than I had thought. (I felt a bit guilty as I had initially thought it was just a little cut and he had over-reacted!) Anyway, Saturday afternoon was spent waiting in accident and emergency. People were complaining about waiting but personally I felt that it was pretty fair. Ian's injury was not that serious and in fact a rest for 2 hours was probably exactly what we both needed. He saw a nurse after a while who cleaned it, stuck it back together, covered it up and gave him a tetanus booster and we got back in time for dinner! Sunday was spent shopping and in the afternoon I tried to save my pond, which I had killed by neglect. It was covered in blanket weed, sludge and full of debris from the winter. By this time it was pouring with rain but I was so pleased to see that the frog who lives in the pond had managed to survive (although he seemed rather cross at having his pond disturbed). I also saw a baby newt although the adult had not been so lucky and I fished him out dead. For the rest of the day we looked out at the pouring rain! On Monday Ian discovered that the reason that the shredder had shot him was because it was b**ggered and set about trying to mend it. After a trip to an electrical store and a new part the shredder worked again and in between rain and wind we attempted to tame the garden! So.. I guess that was my bank holiday and it was probably quite like the bank holiday of many others (judging by the other men in accident and emergency with similar looking hands!) (I will try to get a picture of the frog if I can as he is rather beautiful and I am quite proud of him for survivng despite my neglect).

Strange dream?

I was tired last night so went to be early and soon settled down to a nice nights sleep. I was in the middle of a really nice dream when I heard a bell ringing. After a while I realised that it was my door bell and managed to leave my dream long enough to get up and see what it was. I opened the door to see a policeman there telling me that the house next door was on fire, the fire brigade were on their way and I didn't need to leave just yet but he was letting me know just in case! I remember going back upstairs and throwing on some clothes over my nightdress and then going outside as the fire brigade arrived. My neighbours were looking out the window and people were standing around. We stopped and had a conversation as it seems that the woman who lives there has been unwell lately and may have started the fire deliberately. The fire brigade left, the cat ran out of the house in a panic and after a while the dog was located somewhere in the house and rescued by the family. I decided to go back to bed and in an almost inappropriately short space of time was fast asleep again! When I woke the next morning I wasn't even sure that it had happened except for the black windows and the curtains in the upstairs bedroom next door. My neighbours were saying that it must be something to do with the house as everyone that has lived there has had mental health problems. I live in a small cul-de-sac but a lot happens! Last week the woman over the road was evicted. Her possessions were piled up into the council van and driven away!

Sand dunes and nudists

Isn't it strange how the very people that really should keep their clothes on don't! One day in Gran Canaria Ian and I had a day off and went to see the sand dunes at Maspalamos. We didn't realise that the whole area was a nudist beach! I don't really have a problem with people who want to take all their clothes off and lie in the sun, but confining it all to one area tends to make it a bit more of an exhibition. What struck me the most was that the majority of nude bathers were well past pensionable age, had obviously enjoyed a life of ample food and had skins that looked like old leather shoes. In particular, the rear end seems to take on more of a toughened, leathery look than the rest of the body. There would have been a great picture if I had had the nerve to take it, of a row of naked and leathery bottoms bobbing up and down over the waves as their owners attempted to get in the sea! Ian and I kept our shorts, shirts and hats firmly on as we were wary of getting too much sun!

Walking with LLamas

On Saturday we finally got to go for a walk with llamas! We wanted to go a couple of weeks ago but it was fully booked for all the Sundays in May! With a maximum of 10 people at £25 a time for an hours walk we we impressed with the potential! The llama I walked was called Nicholas and he was three and a half and white. He was a little taller than me when fully upright but pretty laid back. In fact I think he was a bit of a nervous llama as he didn't like to walk too near the front or too near the back (probably in case a lion came and jumped on him!). He also had sensitive skin and I think it was a bit itchy as he liked to rub his neck up and down on my arm. I learnt that llamas are all different with different personalities. Leroy in the picture was a little mad and a bit bossy! Llamas, like all animals are primarily motivated by food and really saw the walk as a way of getting to eat a different patch of grass at every opportunity! They seemed pretty easy going up to a point, providing we followed their rituals ( a compulsory toilet stop at the llama loo on the way back) and they were certainly quite intelligent in a strange llama sort of way!

Tour de France 2

Ian and I have volunteered to marshall for a day when the Tour de France comes to London. This means attending a briefing session next week when I guess we will find out what our job entails. I suspect it will mean standing around all day in some God-forsaken part of town trying to stop angry motorists from driving down a closed street or trying to persuade pedestrians not to cross the road in front of the peleton! Whatever it is I know it will not be glamorous and the best that will happen is that we will get a glimpse of the peleton as it speeds by! In France I think they treat the race with a bit more respect and the role of marshall is handed down from generation to generation! Mind you, in France they even have a church dedicated to the riders of 'Le Tour' called Notre-Dame-des-Cyclistes. It's about midway between Bordeaux and Lourdes and I visited it about 13 years ago when I did a bike ride from Bordeaux to Barcelona. It's a small country church with iron gates with bicycles in them. Inside, amongst other cycling related things, are the worn jerseys of most of the Tour de France Cyclists. Many of the peleton are quite religious. You often see them kissing the crosses they wear around their necks as they win a stage. Apparently many stop into the church if the race is passing by and say a prayer. I have just read up a little on the church to jog my memories and found details of the inscription at the feet of Notre-Dame:

Mary, Queen of the world, we humbly ask you to bless and protect the cyclists of the world and help them to finish happily the main and final stage, which leads to heaven.
Amen.

You have to understand the Tour de France to understand the true meaning of this! (And to have cycled up a good few hills in your time!)

For more details http://home-1.tiscali.nl/~edwinsel/misc_religie.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_des_Cyclistes

Village day

On the last day of our holiday (Sunday) we cycled up to the village of Ayagaures. It was a very long as steep road climb and as it was the end of the week we were pretty tired when we got there. The village is next to a large dam. Water is a problem in Gran Canaria as in the South it is very hot and dry and in the mountains it is wet. Consequently the countryside is covered with various contraptions from old plastic pipes hung up with string to sophisticated dams and aqueducts designed to bring the water from the North to the South. When we got to the village they were preparing for some sort of celebration. A big barbecue was being started and people were sitting in the small village square or in the church. We stopped a while and then headed up the valley a mile or so, where we found a quiet spot to have lunch. After a sit down we decided that we were a bit too tired to do too much hard riding and so headed back to do a nice gentle downhill back to the hotel. On the way back to the village we heard fireworks going off and as we got to the dam a procession was starting up. The village people were on the dam wall and began walking back towards the square accompanied by musicians and singers, clapping out a steady beat. The procession came towards us and at the centre the priest lead four of the strongest village men carrying a statue of Jesus. They passed us and we followed behind them to the village square where they continued with their festival and we carried on back down the hill! I asked later in the hotel what the event was and the hotel staff said it was the local 'village day'. All the villages have them this time of the year one after the other. I suppose it may be a bit like our May fairs except the Canaria version are quite serious religious occasions. I mentioned it to Petra when she took us to the airport the following morning and she told us that the people in Gran Canaria are quite deeply religious people. They all attend church regularly, even the younger people, and they practice their religion sincerely.

Gran Canaria

Ian and I have just spent a week in Gran Canaria. We organised it through a contact we found on the Internet. Petra is an Austrian woman who has lived with her family in Gran Canaria for 15 years and seems to have a role in organising and promoting cycling events and holidays. We took our bikes and she arranged a very nice hotel where they didn't mind us carrying the dirty bikes through the lobby after a days riding. We had a good time and rode on five out of the six days. We left the hotel around about 10.30 and usually had a 6 kilometre ride to get to the start of the mountains. From there it was uphill and there were certainly some hills! The Island goes from sea level to 1900 metres in about 20 miles so the hills are steep! Mind you, coming back is always downhill. The picture is of me riding up one of many hills on the first day. The track on the right of the picture is where we have just come from.
We did about 40 kms on average most days with a fair bit off road. It was also unusually hot for Gran Canaria (which usually has a perpetual spring like climate)and in the sun the temperature was 35-40c with no shade. On our first ride we almost ran out of water! Most evenings we got back to the hotel, showered, went to dinner early, managed to drink one beer and then couldn't stay awake past 9.00pm. We usually slept through until 8.30 the following morning. It felt quite natural to be so tired and to sleep for so long and to wake up feeling mentally refreshed (even if my legs still ached some mornings. Once back here I was soon back to later nights and a less peaceful sleep!