10 January 2012

The A team functioned very well in Alice’s absence. I wish I could say the same for Dragon. I did manage to get yesterday’s entry down eventually, but only after a great deal of effort. I received a note from the good Dr Michael commenting on his visit and one of the things he suggested was that the stress that I’ve been put under over the problems with Dragon could be affecting my health and the quicker I resolved them the better. I wonder if that is one of the reasons I have become hypersensitive with sudden rises in temperature and, no doubt ,if. my blood pressure was taken at that time it would be quite high. Good old Michael suggested some other possibility for these symptoms. He thinks that there are possibly surges in adrenaline caused by a tumour somewhere or other, and vague possibility, but one which he respectfully suggested that the GP might have investigated so as to eliminate it as a cause. Anywhere the Blood Pressure has been taken and some blood for further tests and no doubt it t I shall here the results in a day or two.

One enormous advantage in having Michael to stay for a few days is that it is equivalent to having one’s private physician shadowing your over this period. He can obviously observe you under varying degrees of stress or other activity whereas in the one-off appointment with your GP . you can only recount situations which have occurred to the best of your recollection.. So with someone as experiences as Michael his comments or observations can be extremely helpful lto the GP. Of course, Michael has been around long enough to know the sensitivities of the medical profession and is always extremely polite in suggesting they might care to consider this or that and not look as though he is usurping their personal relationship with the patient.

Jane ‘the sheep’ came until midday when Paul ‘the computer’ took over and fed me my lunch whilst being subjected to the honest to goodness treatment of people, mainly involved in ridiculous domestic situations, being lectured to by Judge Judy. I forget then what happened about the switchover but I know Jane went off around 6.00 when the carers came to get me ready for bed. That was before Paul fed me my supper. He had brought with him a film called Inception, which, I think was a little too complicated for my weary brain. It was very well done but very noisy as we had my surround sound on, which, in the normal way, I would not use because ‘my lovely’ suffers from sensitive hearing.. Beside that the film and the special effects were incredible. As to the storyline, which was indeed complex,it was not always easy to follow, in that it involved planting dreams within dreams within dreams in a person’s mind to have some effect on a real event in life. It all got a little mixed up in my befuddled brain, particularly as I probably dozed off for a few minutes here and there, which made it even more complicated to follow. Even the simplest films today seem to have to have a subplot. That is two stories going on at the same time intercut and perhaps in different time zones. What happened to the good old simple movies with a beginning, a middle and an end? One didn’t have to work to be had to follow the storyline whereas with a modern movie. It is almost like an oral examination. In today’s film you had 5 or 6 min of action, before the title appears. , You could be well excused for wondering if you’re on the right channel or whether what you’re watching an advertisements, as what you are watching would appear to have. nothing in common with the title of the film, who had intended to watch, except it all becomes clear an hour so later when what you were seeing was a flashback 10 years earlier!.! Anyway Paul enjoyed it., that was the main thing.

I have not commented on the world global financial situation for a week or two because several countries still seem to be teetering on the edge of financial disaster So, nothing new there then. A new element has crept in to the European side of it and that is Hungry’s financial situation which apparently is dire. and which, apparently, the Finance Ministers and only just noticed.! Or, if they had they weren’t telling us about it. Spain, Italy and even Portugal’s debts have been well aired -the fact that the latest interest that Italy is now having to pay is 7 1/3.%, which apparently is totally unsustainable – But nothing, so far as I can recall, about Hungry Although they are not part of the Eurozone. They are a member of the EU and therefore their financial collapse would impinge upon all members. The whole business has become so complex, not only in terms of the possible European position should one of its members default ,either one who is part of the Eurozone or even one is just an EU member, that it is hard to keep up. We just go on day-to-day with our head in the sand hoping nothing will happen, and somehow or other, it will all go away.. One thing is for certain, there is nothing I can do sitting immobile in my office chair all day other than to protect my own personal interests which I have done to some extent by switching the form of my investments. Beyond that, I follow my long observed philosophy of not worrying about things about which I can do nothing.

Yesterday was a first in that I received a couple of e-mails from my oldest grandson, Fred. Up to now everything has being filtered through his mother. As I have been feeding the boys on snippets from U tube. this is the first real response I have had, which I’m very pleased about.. Fred’s two e-mails comprised one of which a poor buffalo calf with attacked by a pride of lions, slipped into the river, during the fight with the lions and then engaged in an uncomfortable, and no doubt painful, tug of war between lions and croc which the lions won when the calf was dragged back onto dry land, at which stage the whole buffalo herd charged the lions and drove them off. The buffalo calf was quickly swallowed up by the herd so we shall never know what physical damage he suffered at the teeth of the lions or the crocc. but he would certainly have been traumatised and learned his lesson not to stray too far from his mother’s side in future.. It was all very fascinating and exciting but I don’t think that one is for the blog. The second one he sent involved a tiger protecting and sleeping with a one day old baboon, whose mother he had killed. These sort of videos showing great insight into the animal kingdom and I think are fascinating. Fred, thank you and I reproduce your second video here. Just click here and watch

9 January 2012

A day of coming and goings. Alice’s mother’s funeral is on Wednesday so there were many things to organise to allow ‘my lovely’ to be away for the best part of two nights. It might just as well been a month for amount of things that had to be arranged. First of all, there was […]

8 January 2012

A quiet day at home after all the recent excitement. Of course, it’s Sod’s law that my Dragon was worse than ever,. immediately following the co-browser session with the technician when it had behaved itself reasonably well. (It’s what I call the ‘dentist syndrome’. We’ve all been there. Been kept. awake all night with a […]

7 January 2012

Campaigners have revived the discussion on assisted suicide, which was given great prominence last summer by Sir Terry Pratchett’s visit to Switzerland to observe a Mr Smedley going through the process and was actually present at his death. Sir Terry’s dilemma is that he is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and has no idea how much […]

6 January 2012

I can now disclose why Alice went down to Cornwall. Sister Victoria had been concerned that her mother was not really eating properly and not talking. So, ‘my lovely’ decided she would go down, while Mick was here, perhaps, to say goodbye. Sadly, my dear mother-in-law passed away the afternoon before Alice planned to go […]

5 January 2012

The early morning pretty well followed the one we established yesterday. So after breakfast I completed the blog entries for the last two days while Mick had a shower, etc and then we were able to finish of the exam marking with me typing in the final marks obtained by each candidate on my pre-prepared […]

4 January 2012

As it turned out. Michael was marvellous and had observed much of what goes on in the morning so the getting up and so on followed very much the usual pattern except we deferred breakfast, shaving and teeth cleaning until after the girls had gone and we had breakfast together in the study. As threatened,. […]

3 January 2012

The good Dr Michael arrived from Sweden around six this evening (as usual his timing was impeccable, just-in-time for us to drink a bottle of champagne before supper!). He will be here until Saturday morning, giving’ my lovely’ a couple of days down in Cornwall to see her mother. She leaves at some ungodly hour […]

2 January 2012

With all the doom and gloom of yesterday’s entry I deliberately avoided highlighting some of the excitement we can look forward to this year. For example, the Queens (65th) diamond jubilee celebrations and, of course, the Olympic Games. It’s extraordinary thing that the last time the Games were here was in 1948 (at least I […]

1 January 2012-New Year’s Day

I am not going to the catalogue of disasters and triumphs of the year past or make any prophecies about the forthcoming year except the following. The two most significant events to my mind last year were the Arab Spring uprisings and the global economic situation. What was so interesting about the Arab uprisings was […]