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22 December 2011

Posted by DMC on 23 December 2011 in Diary |

A bad night last night. The pain in my shoulder seams now as intense as it was before the injection also that the severe pain in my left foot.has flared up again.

With both of those going plus a fairly miserable hip you will understand why I said it was not the best of nights. I sent an e-mail to the pain consultant at Addenbrookes, about a week ago,.seeking a further appointment, but have not yet received a reply. I just really needed it for my follow up consultation. The odd thing was that during the first consultation, the consultant said nothing about the knees or the foot and I rather expected him to come back to me, except he changed my medication,. perhaps hoping. that would do the trick.. After all he is not just a’ shoulders only’ man but styles himself a’ pain consultant’ so therefore should be able to deal with any pain. It’s no good trying to get hold of this consultant as he would appear to have left for his Christmas break, like so many other people. I suspect it will be like most years and nothing much will happen, on the business front, between now and the first Monday in January.

That reminds me I had hoped that my faithful Occupational Therapist, Lynne, would have come back to me by now with some suggestion as to how I can mark the examination papers. I have an idea myself for holding the pen between the two middle fingers of my right hand. With a permanently fixed palm up it needs Lynne’s’ skill to make the necessary plastic splint to hold the pen in place. I was rather hoping to mark these papers between Christmas and New Year but without feedback from Lynne I will probably have to wait until early January.

Although better than it was ,Dragon is still playing up. Still freezing from time to time and now an old message has comeback, ‘ trying to recover from low resources’, whatever that means in terms of my computer which should have more than adequate resources. It’s just possible that ‘Paul the computer’ has downloaded some entire programmes rather than just shortcuts to them.

I seem to have a flurry of visitors. Yesterday afternoon Barton W-P dropped in to deliver a annual gift of one of Judith’s marvellous Christmas cakes. She certainly does make the best and it was rather bad luck of her ,that having started giving me a cake every Chrisand tmas for the past 40 years or, and knowing how much I enjoy fruit cake, it has become a tradition, which she will find hard to break, so I hope she doesn’t regret starting it. But who know this may be the last! .Barton was stressed out because Judith had dropped her iPad or tablet, which was fairly new and expensive and now only works sporadically .Always one for a challenge, Barton had taken it pieces and tried to find out what was the problem. He failed, and was pretty desperate as Judith was giving him a hard time. So reluctantly I said I would speak to Paul ‘the computer’- who I knew was very busy – and ask Paul if I could give Barton his contact details.. I did just that, and later in the day Paul assured me that it was a waste of time trying to repair it himself. He had tried before and spent many hours fiddling around with one before giving up. His suggestion was just take it to the back to the shop and tell them is was not working. Hopefully, as it was still under guarantee, they would replace it.

My first visitor today was Barry ‘the taxi’, who readers will recall took me, last May, together with his wife, Denise, down to Cornwall for niece Gus’s wedding. A week or two later he collapsed and was rushed into Addenbrooke’s Hospital and was found to have a series of abyss’s under his spine. After three or four months in hospital and several operations later he was certainly looking a lot better than when I last saw him..

Apparently he has started driving people again, locally and to Heathrow airport

and said his business is picking up again. I am so glad for him as it took years to build up his good will.

Although looking rather thin and worn out, he was a decent colour and so it looks as though he will pull through. I’m very pleased because his is an extremely nice man and he and his wife Denise, has been incredibly kind to me is, particularly since the MND. It was incredibly lucky, looking at it entirely selfishly, that his collapse occurred precisely when I took to my electric wheelchair and needed the service of somebody like Ollie. Unfortunately Barry does not have an ambulance and so I would have had the unpleasant task of explaining that I would have to switch, which I’m sure he would have understood, but after all these years it would have been a wrench.

The next person to. ‘pop in’ was our faithful gardener Peter. Alice was a little surprised as Peter is a shy person but I suppose after about 30 years has now come to know me quite well and hopefully is as concerned about my state of health as I would be about his. Anyway, he did come to see me and we had a nice little chat, mainly about cricket and the forthcoming spring, which neither of us know how much of it I shall see, and I think Peter was only too aware of that when we were talking. Anyway is extremely kind of him to want to come and see me, particularly as he came bearing gifts-a pot of his mother’s home-made raspberry jam, my absolute favourite.

Talking of gifts has reminded me that, I owe a thank you, for a bottle of champagne and some chocolate truffles which arrived a couple of days ago from the eldest of my nephews, William Garton Jones. Dear Will, I knew him before I met Alice. Al’s sister Mary, who very sadly died around 20 years ago from leukaemia, was married to John Garton Jones, who was stationed in Aden, (a British Protectorate then, now part of the Southern Republic of the Yemen) and Alice, who was working in Kenya, at the time, flew in for Will’s christening,

Apropos of nothing, I think most of you will enjoy seeing some very rare sights. Click here and enjoy.

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