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26 March 2012

Posted by DMC on 28 March 2012 in Diary |

 

The fine weather continues so I started the day by booking Ollie for the golf club tomorrow. As I said in an earlier entry, Englishman seem to adore commenting on the weather. Maybe it’s just because it’s a good icebreaker when you’re meeting a stranger for the first time. Anyway, the point I was going to make is that the weather in Scotland is probably more amazing than anything else as it is usually a few degrees colder there than in in the South. Yet yesterday the highest March temperature ever recorded in the UK, 22.8°C, was in the North East of Scotland and is expected to be even higher today. I just hope this is not’ our summer, similar to the weather last year when April and May were glorious but after that the weather was very mixed all the way through to the winter.

After Richard’s visit, with my mother last week, I realised what a wonderful respite was the PC he has at present. He can not only surf the net but Skype to me and the rest of the family as well as sending the odd e-mail. He is virtually self taught but his PC is a bit old and is currently out of commission awaiting an engineer on Monday. The problem with someone like Richard is that even the simplest problem requires the services of someone who understands computers and in many instances can be sorted out in a few moments but nevertheless it still costs Richard the callout time and possibly a minimum attendance period. It’s a pity he can’t find a mate in Church Stretton who would pop round and sort out the little problems for him. However having realised what an escape it is from the house where he is virtually a prisoner, caring from my mother, I decided to have my personal laptop cleaned up and presented to Richard. Good old ‘ Paul the computer’ removed the old data and we reloaded only those programmes which we thought would be of use to Richard, thus making the whole process simpler and improving the operational speed. I sent it off with Smiler on Saturday but it will not be delivered until the Thursday before Easter as Miles and Kimberly are going to Bwlch Uchaf,. our Welsh retreat, for Easter..

Ironically, the quality of the picture on the laptop I am giving to Richard is significantly better than the brand-new Dell I’m working on at present. My old Toshiba had 1200 x 900 pixels compressed into the smaller screen compared with 1300 x 9 pixels in my 15 inch screen, which, a little bit misleadingly, is advertised as HD ( high-definition), so by stretching out the pixels to fit the bigger screen it obviously produces a poorer quality picture. This is just the sort of thing you should look out for when buying a new computer..

 A succession of people and urgent telephone calls me pretty hard at it today. First of all for the umpteenth time, I telephoned the Cambridgeshire community services about the cage I want to try out under my heavy bedclothes (now some weeks since I first asked about it). Then I called the Occupational Therapist about the Pressure Cushion for my lounger chair. I just wanted to make sure that they ordered a' high risk' one rather than one of 'medium risk' one similar to that which I have on my wheelchair. 

 

 Then Paul ‘the computer’ turned up, in lieu of Jane,’ the sheep’, to babysit me while Alice went off to do her own thing. We spent three happy hours tinkering with the computer exploring new ideas to make life easier. For example, Paul is making it possible for me to link my laptop to the television so that by using catch up, I can share Alice various programmes which run on after nine o’clock which she is interested in seeing. He is also tidying up my music library and working out some macros so that I can find and start a particular piece of music using my voice activation.

During the afternoon, Claire ‘the nurse’, turned up to look at my sebaceous cyst. The cuts which Dr Lort had made have now healed over but there was still a hard lump under the skin, which would probably have to be cut out at some stage. Then, at 4.30 my friend Edward Oliver kindly called in to discuss a monstrous tax demand that and I received. By the time Edward left it was almost time for the six o’clock carers and I felt pretty whacked out.

 Although the good Dr Michael has told us the generality of his son Tom’s problem, we still do not know what is the prognosis perhaps, they might have to see the outcome of the chemotherapy and even perhaps the stem cell therapy before they can give us a good idea what is the prognosis. We are both fond of Tom and are anxious for him.

I have always admired stand-up comics who real of one, one-liner jokes after another. Click here for some of Frank Carson’s who was a master in this genre.

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