13 November 2010
Today, very sadly, represents the last day I shall work in my beautiful office until the spring and the warmer weather. It is already getting cold and blustery and the journey from the house along the paving and across the lawn is really quite an effort, particularly as it’s getting muddy. Ironically it’s not so much my legs, as the weakness in my arms, leaning on and manoeuvring the frame, that are becoming the problem and, I suspect, that if I survive until the spring, when I return to the office it will then be in a wheelchair.
In the meantime I must try to sell my three-quarter size modern snooker table which takes up most of the space in the office and obviously makes it more difficult to manipulate a wheelchair, particularly the electrical one. I had this table made, gosh, I should think about 30 years ago, in light oak. It is not a toy, but a triple slate table with full-size snooker balls and is two and three-quarter inches higher than the standard table. This is because I had a 9.0†x 6.0†table tennis table fitted as a top which doubles as a boardroom table for my papers. I just have to find someone with the big house and a large playroom.
The other consideration, of course, about continuing to use the office in the winter, is the weather and the possibility of catching a cold which could turn to pneumonia. Alice has been told quite clearly that she must take great care not to let me catch cold as pneumonia could certainly carry me off, so to speak.
Good old Duncan came round this afternoon – with Clare his girlfriend – and set up all computer equipment and accessories in the study. He made nothing of it and it always seems to fit in very neatly. I can’t say that I’m very happy at the prospect of spending all day in my study chair but, needs must. It’s just the way I felt when I came home one day and found my car had been sold. Another door shuts that will never be opened again!. It is the inexorable diminution in the range of activities that one is capable of doing on a day-to-day basis. The slippery slope down which one is going towards the white light!
We aare determined to work out a new routine where I at least get up and walk around from time to time and, perhaps in the evening, sit in the breakfast room, with a window ajar, muffled up to the gills, to smoke my little cigar and enjoy my evening whisky. I know it’s a habit I could well stop but why bother?
Going back Tim Duncan and Claire I was extremely impressed to learn from her that she has volunteered to spend time with the Salvation Army — my favourite charity — with the homeless over Christmas if the temperatures drop below zero. Add to that the alacrity in which Duncan responds to any calls for help from me, which demonstrates as a kind and caring attitude. It is a heartening sign that such good young people still exist in these times when the newspapers are full of horror stories about the young..
Having reconsidered the reasons for the rejection of my Mitt Wipe, by the three major healthcare companies, all three of which to me, appeared to miss the whole point, after a phone call to Coventry University, it was agreed that there would be nothing lost by me having one further attempt at each of the three firms to point out why I consider this product has a USP (Unique Selling Point). I managed to get through to one of them, who has promised to put it to a different committee. The other two I must try next week.