3 February 2011

A Happy New Year to all my Chinese readers. GONG XI FA CAI (for my Mandarin readers) KUNG HAI FAT CHOY (for my Cantonese readers) – I hope I got that right! In any event, I hope you all have a wonderful year of the Golden Rabbit.

After yet another session on the remote assist with Ben, of AbilityNet I hope to have sorted out  most of my computer problems

Another WendyLett sheet arrived today from me to try. This is a three-quarter length sheet which allows you to have an under sheet to give friction for your feet.

We will try this tomorrow and I will report back. Lynn, my OT, popped in just before lunch to check on the new shower chair which he says is still not quite right, so she has more work to do on that. She is a really caring conscientious person and is determined to do everything she can to make life easier for me. After I let her know whether this new Wend Lett is satisfactory  she is prepared approach our local PCT about their willingness or otherwise to pay for these sheets, as do the Somerset PCT as I gather they are quite expensive will stop

This afternoon one the ‘old faithfuls’,_Douglas Gordon, dropped in for tea and a chat. Douglas, my erstwhile stockbroker, founded the best village magazine in the country, which has been acknowledged as such. Indeed the village of Newport now runs a national competition, annually, to find the best village magazine.. Douglas also founded a croquet club in Newport, which seems to be going great guns.

Douglas’wife, the aptly named Cecilia (the patron saint of Music) is my erstwhile piano teacher (referred to in the following extract has’ the local piano teacher’). I can best recount my piano playing days by reproducing an extract from my autobiographical notes. From the chapter entitled Musical or Not!

I was at a supper party one day in my 40th year and a discussion ensued about playing the piano.  I heard myself say how much I would love to be able to play myself. I had, in fact, started once in my teens, but, having no piano of our own, I was forced to practice on a friend’s. After a couple weeks his mother could stand it any longer and my piano playing aspirations withered.

On the way home from that dinner party, musing on the things that we had discussed, I realized what a stupid comment I had made in saying how much I would love to be able to play.  If I really wished I could play the piano, what was stopping me? The following day I bought a piano and signed up with the local   piano teacher for lessons. I decided that I would get up every day at six o’clock and practice for 40 minutes.  I would give myself 10 years to see if I could reach a reasonable level of competence.  After a year or so I entered for my Grade 1 examination.. I was extremely nervous.  I remember that my ‘big’ piece was called something like Swans and Ducks, which I practiced assiduously, for weeks,  before the big day.

The day of the examination arrived.  I presented myself at the Village Hall, along with of a half a  dozen toddlers taking the same examination.. When it came to my turn I entered the examination with trepidation.  I marched up to the invigilator, who was busy recording the efforts of the last examinee.  I stuck out my hand which she ignored as she continued to write.  She impatiently waved me away in the direction of the piano.  I sat down on the stool and found that I could not get my knees under the keyboard. The stool was, not surprisingly, far too high as the last hopeful had been little more than 3 feet tall.  I spent the next few minutes working myself up into a muck sweat trying to wind it down.

By this time the invigilator was getting ready impatient and told me, rather peremptorily, “to get on with it.”  She immediately demanded an arpeggio, from the top down and up.  I had only been taught to play them from the bottom up and down, so  was immediately thrown off my stride.  I fumbled my way through that and the scales and so on, until I came to my ‘big’  piece.  Somehow I struggled through it until I got to the last eight bars by which time I could not recognize a single note. All I could see were, what looked like, black inkblots.

I achieved a score on 101 marks -the pass mark  being 100. So my piano career was off to a stumbling start. I continued to practice daily, as I had promised myself, and after 10 years reached Grade 5 level. I then assessed my competence and decided that I would murder the instrument no longer, and have never played a note since.  The piano was shortly after purloined by my musical daughter and I’m pleased to say that grandson Fred has just taken ( Mar.2009) his Grade 1 piano exam, and hopefully passed with flying colours.

A rather risque joke with apologies to my Greek readers. Giving back to the church

He did!

2 February 2011

I have had an entirely frustrating day today. First of all England lost the sixth of the cricket ODI’s in Australia in the last over but I have to admit it was an exciting game. Trott was again the star of the English batsmen with 137 Then I tried to come to grips with this new computer and first of all had problems with my voice activation, which after some time I only partially managed to resolve by plugging in the USB cable into a different port. Then I tried to edit my blog, using exactly the same method as previously and all I managed to do was to eliminate chunks of it, which I was fortunate to be able to recover. Maybe it’s all to do with the current programme being Vista as opposed to XP Professional but whatever it is I’m now stuck with it and will have to work out how to resolve the current problems I’m having.

Add to this the fact that my second landline has been out of order for the last two days and being hands-free is an absolutely essential piece of equipment, I feel as I’m having a really bad time. I’ve spoken to Orange who conducted some tests and it seems to have come down to the possibility that the handset itself is defective and until my son comes home, at the weekend, and I can move plugs about for me we will not be certain as to the problem. I’m sorry to be so negative that we all have those days when we wish we never even got out of bed.!

Have a look at this fantastic photographs of the famous Pulpit Mountain in Norway. If you  don’t have a head for heights don’t look!

31 January 2011

In a recent January entry I mentioned an unusual figure of speech,  Paraprosdokian sentences. One of my readers in the USA has sent me further examples which you may find fun to look at. When I was looking through the diary to try to locate the correct entry I was horrified to see that there was a gap between 20th and 10th of January. I checked my original Blog Diary and found that I had made entries on every one of those missing days except 14 January but they had somehow not been published on  the Blog itself.. I do hope this has not happened in the past and will obviously have to check that each entry is properly posted every day in future. I still have not sorted out the media properly and had somehow got to work out how to separate the diary text from it and just leave the media entry.

In the early evening my good and kindly friend Duncan came straight from work to tweak this laptop, Toshiba,. Satellite Pro. He copied over all the latest data, reorganised the icons and added a few more that I had previously had on my last laptop and even managed to give me the same Desktop picture that I had originally, which was not available on the new machine so that to all intents and purposes it looks and feels very much like the one I’ve been using for some time. The main difference now is that I have Vista rather then XP Professional with which I had become a familiar. I understand the reason why AbilityNet used Vista, rather than XP Professional was that Microsoft have been threatening to stop supporting that particular programme  so I shall have to get used to the differences between that and Vista. I am so lucky having such a good friend as Duncan who is always prepared to come round and sort out any little problems I might have with my computer which, of course, has become more difficult since the loss of my hands. Fortunately, as I have been using a computer for at least 25 years I am semi computer literate and can sort most problems out for myself. The main difference now is that what I was always able to do with my hands I am trying to learn to do with my voice or more exactly a combination of voice and my one splinted finger,. until such times as I lose the use of that finger altogether, when my arms give out.. Sticky keys is a great invention as it allows you to the press two or three keys in succession and have the same effect as if you were holding them all down at the same time. For an example in order to bring up the Task Manager you have to press  Ctrl,Alt & Del. Sticky keys allow you to do one after the other and achieve the same result.

30 January 2011

Yesterday afternoon there was a knock at the door and there were our good neighbours, Tom and Dee, with their three dear little girls. They presented Alice with a box of delicious  home-made heart-shaped biscuits and three dear little cards, drawn and written personally by each of the girls, commiserating with Alice over the loss of the donkey. For as long as they can remember these little girls have given Mouse, the donkey, carrots and other titbits, through the adjoining hedge. Alice had telephoned the parents to give them the bad news and to warn them that the children  might see the donkey being hoisted into a horsebox and she did not want them to be alarmed. Having said that, what a lovely gesture from our neighbours.

During the night, before the commentary on the cricket began, I listened to a very interesting discussion about the conflict between religious belief and the rights of persons under the Human Rights Act. (HRA). I shall not go into any specific details,  so as not to give offence to any of my readers, but the point being debated, in a nutshell, was that ‘should any person be bound, against their religious beliefs,  to commit some act, or make some concession because not to do so would infringe another person’s so-called human rights and leave the refusor open to prosecution from the refusee’.

There are obviously instances where a refusal can give offence or can be considered to be discriminatory, either sexual, racial, political, religious etc. Here again, under our various Acts and legislation, covering such forms of discrimination, the person or persons being complained of could be subject to court action. Almost every such action today, that is publicised in our newspapers, seems to me, at any rate, generally to lean more towards the complainant’s human rights rather than what ‘the man on the Clapham omnibus’ would consider was common sense.

One of the people, on the programme, pointed out, for example, that it is not discrimination, or against a person’s human rights, to refuse accommodation in say, a hotel or B&B, to all redheads. Also, I believe landlords of licensed premises have an absolute right of refusal to serve anyone, without giving reasons. At least that used to be the law, whether that has changed as a result of the HRA,. I know not. Of course if the person who was  refused service, or thrown out, was neither drunk nor being disruptive in any way and they were of the opinion that the reason for the landlords action was as a result of their colour, class, sexual proclivity or creed, then they obviously would have a right to challenge the landlord in court but, I suspect, in such a case the burden of proof would not lie with the landlord.

I just wonder how many of the other 28 members of the EU are as scrupulous as we are in this country about observing the HRA. I do know that the HRA, the Health and Safety (H & S) legislation and similar discriminatory statutes have made a nonsense of what, in the past, would have been considered common sense. I recall one instance of a lady who ran a local riding school who was told that she could not assist a 13-year-old girl to dismount in case, in doing so, she touched her breasts. She could, however, stand by the horse and in the event that the girl fell off,  attempt to catch her! What, if in attempting to cushion her fall, the girl fell awkwardly, twisting her leg under her, and therefore sustained more injury than perhaps she would have done otherwise? Would the riding school proprietor then be liable for damages for the girls injury? There are thousands of other examples of such ludicrous situations, many of which are responsible for third parties, such as teachers or scoutmasters, from taking groups of children out on adventure or field trips for fear of any child being injured, however slightly, and being sued by the parents.

The grazed knee or the odd  broken leg or arm was par for the course for youngsters who roamed free in the countryside, in my youth, but now we cotton-wool our young to such an extent against possible injury or germs that they must be far more vulnerable than my generation.

Isn’t it about time we considered abolishing, or please modifying or qualifying the HRA, the H & S  legislation and some of the discriminatory law and rely, as we always did in the past, on good common sense and leave it to our judges to decide whether or not there is a good cause of action if someone is offended or injured in some way or other by a third party?

I realise that I have moved away from the original point I started with but what about the ludicrous advertisements warning parents about children catching any germs whatsoever and spraying every surface with some proprietary product to kill 99.9% of all known germs. What about the old adage about everyone ‘ should eat a peck of dirt before they die’. Good common sense, as it is nature’s way of strengthening the body’s immune system. I can give you a personal  example. Son Miles was born in Aden, now part of the Yemen,  Southern Arabia. My ’boy’, Ahmed, a Yemani of indeterminate age, went into the market every morning to purchase green coffee beans, which he roasted to produce a fresh pot of coffee, for me,  each morning. Apart from the normal fresh  produce for sale in the market there were numerous sheep and goats and, as a result,  the marketplace was pretty filthy underfoot. Ahmed traditionally wore rubber flip-flops for these excursions. I went into the kitchen one morning to see my few months old son Miles, in his playpen, knawing on one of these flip-flops – I think that he was teething at the time. I have no doubt that the germs that he picked up on that occasion did his immune system a power of good judging by the size and physique of the lad today. I know I have strayed completely from the point from which I started but it is all food for thought.

Having listened, during the night, to the Australian innings in the fifth of the cricket  ODI’s, I settled down to watch the England innings on my laptop and, our man Murray, in the final of the Australian Open tennis, on the television. I can only describe the performance of both our cricketers and our tennis player as mediocre, we lost both. The only person worthy of comment, in the cricket, was young Woakes who took 6 wickets for 45 runs.

28 January 2011

Most of yesterday morning and half of the afternoon was spent at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in the Cataract Clinic. Some two or three months ago the visiting  ophthalmist, after testing my eyes, said that there was little point in me getting new glasses until I’d had the cataract in my left eye removed. Today’s appointment was as a result of that suggestion. I went through a series of tests and measurements and then discussed the matter with the Dr and decided that on balance, my eyesight was sufficiently good at present not to take the risk of anything going wrong but having been through these preliminaries and having my details on record I was promised a fast track in the event that my eyesight severely deteriorated in the future. The point being, that with the uncertainty of my life span with MND, it might well be that I go before the eyes, so to speak. The ambulance people, on both journeys and indeed the staff in the Clinic were, as usual, charming and helpful.

It was still bitterly cold when I went out in the wheelchair to the ambulance, something like 2°C so it looks as though it will be a little while yet before I spent time outside.

The last two or three days we have changed our routine from me climbing the ramp and eating my breakfast in the conservatory, as we were finding the move from the frame to the table extremely precarious as I,  one moment have to let go of the frame and reach for the lower table. Always, in my mind was a possibility of my legs giving way and me crashing either onto the table or the floor. So we have moved my breakfast to the study which will now be our practice unless there  are other people around to assist me from the frame to the table. This certainly works well enough but it means that I spent that much longer in my study chair than before. Another door closes!

A new joke: Mexican Chilli  Cookoff ; New photographs: – Depression Era Photographs – America in colour 1939 to 1943 and a new video: Iron Mountain, Pennsylvania very few people know this place even exists

27 January 2011

I forgot to mention yesterday that Juliet, Alice’s first cousin, on her mother’s side, came to tea and check up on me. It was nice to see her again, the last occasion was husband John’s retirement party.

I am determined to break up my daily routine a little more. At present I’m getting into a bit of a rut. After the exhausting business of getting up showering, dressing, breakfasting, teeth cleaning, shaving and looing plus  two  walks, the length of the house (this getting more difficult), I slumped into my study chair and after re-reading the previously prepared blog for the previous day, I then post it before dealing with the day’s e-mails. This usually takes me to around midday when I do to more walks before having an early lunch. I usually watch Judge Judy (what a great judge she is – a female Solomon) during my meal and then after lunch I probably read one of my e-books for a while (I am currently re-reading Tolstoy is Anna Karenina, just having any Cranford) before a mid-afternoon walk and my peppermint tea (meant to be good for excessive wind). At 3.45 ‘my lovely’ will usually join me for Flog It. She has always been fascinated by and collected antiques and loves all those sort of programmes. Then I have a period when I do a little more reading before my evening whiskey is brought in and before we know where it is we have the six o’clock News.

Of course, as soon as the daily temperature reaches double figures I have every intention of resuming my weekly visit to the golf club. I shall travel up, with Barry,  arriving there around 11.00 so that I can be picked up in the buggy, when the players are halfway round, rather than having to get up earlier than usual and be absolutely ready to leave just after eight o’clock, which is what I had to do in the past. Then, after travelling around with my friends for nine holes there will be the usual drinks and then lunch before returning home.

Now the point of this is, as I said at the beginning, that I’m determined to change my daily routine on some days and to that end have persuaded Kit (Orde-Powlett – father of daughter Rosamund, the author of the runaway success book Sister) to come and play chess with me. KIt is very bright and into the surprise me to learn that he was a county standard player, as indeed he is at bridge, so he have to be very gentle and patient with  me, which, knowing  Kit, as I do, I’m sure he will be. Our first game is scheduled for next week.

The new Satellite Pro laptop was delivered this morning so this afternoon I contacted AbilityNet (Ben Harris) who, using one of those remote control systems whereby he can control my laptop, transferred the programmes and data from my old laptop to the new one. I enlisted the assistance of my good neighbour Brian (Barrow) who lives opposite as there were some plugging and unplugging to do which I certainly could not manage myself. I played around with the new laptop after Ben had finished but being Vista as opposed to XP Professional there are differences which are going to take a little getting used to.

Some more add-ons to use and fascinating you:

Jokes

Darwin awards.htm

Great Date.dox

Dog Lover

Photos

TherapythroughLove.pps

This is fun and gives you a sense of power.docx

Video

You are invited to Long Island .docx – sounds fascinating historical photographs of the background to Charles Lindenberg’s historic Atlantic crossing.

26 January 2011

A handsome win for England, by 22 runs In the fourth of the ODI cricket series against Australia. The first win against Australia on this ground since 1983 and this, ‘rubbing in the salt’, on Australia Day. Jonathan Trott was again star of the show with a century, well supported by Prior. This series is still alive with Australia leading 3-1.

Seeing the spectacular sunset which highlighted Adelaide’s skyline, behind the cricket oval, reminded me of the six months that I spend in this city in 1957/58. Here is an extract from my Autobiographical Notes covering my stay there.

Either before or after Queensland I spent six months or so in Adelaide. Here again I was introduced to the local deb’s delight, Bill Hickling. It may well have been after Hobart as I was probably introduced to him by Ginger Morris. Bill had a spare bed in his flat and invited me to share with him.  He was particularly fascinated by all things British and, in particular, the beginning of the swinging ‘60’s in London. One evening, he was thumbing through one of the many glossy magazines with which he kept up to date with social events, he threw out the casual remark to the effect that he would really love to start the first coffee lounge in Australia. These new fashionable meeting places for young people were springing up all over London at the time.  There was a very famous one in Knightsbridge called the El Cubano. It was fitted out inside like a jungle, it even had colourful parrots in gilded cages. The entrance was flanked by two half naked shining Nubian spear carriers.  A great place to take one’s young lady.

From memory they only served  varieties of exotic coffee but these were in the days before young people felt it necessary to get paralytic in order to enjoy themselves. I suspect it was my account of this particular establishment that prompted the wistful comment from Bill.

As a great believer in the saying, that if you want something ‘go for it’, I told Bill that if he really wanted to open a coffee lounge then he should do so and, in fact, I would help him. I persuaded him to come with me, there and then, drive round the streets & find some suitable premises. I saw a ‘To Let’ sign on an old bank building at 105 North St. I rang up the following day and procured a five-year lease. Together with a third partner, Syd Ball (who subsequently became quite a famous contemporary Australian artist) we spent the next six months, at weekends and evenings, painting and fitting out this coffee lounge/cum restaurant.

We had a little capital between us, around £400, indeed I have a  record of my £165 contribution, which was the maximum amount contributed by any of us. Nevertheless we did succeed in completing the task.

We painted the exposed, un-plastered, brick walls white, on which we displayed paintings from struggling Australian artist’s — these were changed every month. As the ceilings were very high we hung  alternate layers of orange and olive green plywood sheets, between which spotlights shone on the paintings.

We made the tables from cast-iron bases from sewing machines with circular plywood tops which we covered with full-length white linen table clothes. The chairs were bentwood, which I remember, very clearly, purchasing for nine shillings for 18. (or around 45p each in modern coinage). Our crockery was the finest bone china Noritaki – as it turned out, a great mistake

Health and safety regulations  was one of our major areas of expenditure.  However, again, all of the equipment was purchased second-hand, usually at auction. So, it came about, some months after we signed the lease, we were ready to open. The whole place looked frightfully smart and was finished off with a black  and orange awning over the front shop window.  I think I was the only one of the three of us who had a full-time job, certainly Syd was painting and  Bill may well have been between jobs but I cannot be sure about this.

I know that we opened at lunchtime and closed after midnight, most evenings.  Our biggest problem was cooking, even though our menu was very limited. Here we were fortunate in managing to persuade a very ancient chef to come out of retirement.

He was a very short gentleman and his chefs hat almost doubled his size.! This became an important factor when it came to toasting our speciality, the club sandwich. We had a very powerful wall mounted toaster,  on a shelf in the kitchen,  around 5 ft. above the ground, which was wired direct into the electricity main in the street, as it required an enormous amount of power,. Orders from the customers were written on slips of paper and placed in a hatch between the main restaurant and the kitchen.  For some reason the kitchen always seemed to be in chaos and it took what seemed to be an inordinate amount of time to fill the simplest of orders.  Frankly, it was far too much for the poor old chef who was probably over 70.  On this particular occasion I remember attempting to control the anxiety in my voice when asking where a particular order for a club sandwich was.

Picking up on my anxiety  the little chef rushed over to the toaster and yanked it out so violently that at least six club sandwiches shot straight over the top of his head onto the floor. All of this was a very stressful experience after working all day in a surveyor’s office. Despite these small setbacks, ‘The 105’, as it was called, was an immense success. Many times there were far more people queuing outside waiting to get in there and the 30 or 40 people who were already fortunate enough to have gained access.

I left Adelaide a few months after the coffee lounge opened. However, I had made my point to Bill.  If you want to do something badly enough then go for it. . The business continued for some years and then was sold but I never recovered my £165

I slept on the ‘sliding’ WendyLett sheet last night and I must say I was impressed. It’s certainly enabled me to turn over far more easily than without it and I was a little surprised that it was not more slippery. In order to affect the turnover however, I did have to press my feet on the footboard but that  is, I fear, due to my general body weakness.

From the illustration that I had been sent I was under the impression that the bottom two or three feet of the sheet was nonslip material which would enable the patient to push against it in order to affect the turning over. I telephoned the Nordic Care People and spoke again to Mahesh (Shenoy) the office manager, who I’ve found charming and extremely helpful. He tells me that his company’s policy is to find the right product for every enquirer and if a customer is not satisfied they are only too delighted to either refund the money or substitute a different product. As a result of my call Mahesh is going to send me a piece of nonslip material to fit over the bottom end of the sheet to see if that will make it easier for me to press against when trying to turn over. When that arrives I will see how I get on with it and then say whether I would endorse this product for people with similar physical difficulties.

25 January 2011

An e-mail from Mick to say that he is wretched with flu and so is son William apparently. He was obviously brewing up for it when he left here the day before yesterday and being utterly selfish I hope he was not contagious at the time. I have had a flu jab but ‘ my lovely’ has not. If she became ill I’m not quite sure what we could do,  she clearly would not be able to look after me. Would that mean I would have to  be carted off to hospital? Anyway, Alice  asked ‘Jane the sheep’s’  partner John, who is a doctor, what is the incubation period for flu, so we would know when we are in the clear. John suggests 72 hours and as I have had the flu injection it is most unlikely that I would get infected anyway.

Mouse, the donkey, had a very elegant departure from her stable  yesterday. The animal undertaker came with a smart blue ‘ horse box’ with the words Resting Donkey written on the side. The carcass was put onto a stretcher and gently lowered into this conveyance with the utmost dignity. It will take us all some time to forget ‘ dear old donk’.

Today my WendyLett sheet arrived and has been placed over the mattress. I’m really quite excited about trying this tonight to see if it really does make turning over in bed that much easier. Watch this space!

Two district nurses came today, both called Mary, to take further blood tests, prior to my visit to the orthopaedic consultant, the week after next. I must say these ladies were very efficient and very charming and I continue to be grateful for the excellent service that I’m being given by the NHS.

Great excitement today. I received a draft chapter of the fourth edition of my book, Arbitration Practice and Procedure-Interlocutory and Hearing Problems. This particular chapter was prepared by Prof Robert Merkin, one of the two contributing editors selected for this edition. I must say I was quite impressed as Robert has been faithful to my original format. It seems that they are aiming for a June publication date. I just hope I am around and in decent shape to enjoy the launch.

24 January 2011

A very sad day. The news on the donkey front, I’m very sorry to say, is not good. When ‘Jane the vet’ came early this morning she sadly concluded that Mouse was getting very weak and not eating. It was pretty clear that she would not last very much longer in that condition and there was nothing they could really do to alleviate the situation, so she was gently and painlessly dispatched to the Mouse to the donkey heaven where all her troubles will be over. Of course, ‘my lovely’ is very upset. She has invested a great deal of love into this creature who she has had since 1994 and will be sadly missed.

Yesterday, Mick and I unpacked the computer that had been delivered to us by courier from the AbilityNet people. I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was a Toshiba Satellite Pro, the latest version of my personally owned  laptop as opposed to the one lent to me by the MND Association.

We loaded a few programmes onto it and I got the impression that it was far superior to the other laptop that the MND Association have kindly loaned to me. I see little point in sending my present one back to AbilityNet to try to speed it up in order to recognise, more quickly, the commands on the voice activation programme. Rather it would be more sensible if I was allowed to keep, on loan of course, this new Satellite Pro version. I telephoned my friend Nick Ross, at the MND Association, earlier this morning, and even offered to pay the difference in money, if necessary, in order to retain this superior laptop. As always the MND Association were extremely  generous and Nick saw no reason why the swap should not be made.

So, a call through to AbilityNet, who had also been informed of this decision, set the wheels in motion. The Satellite Pro has to be returned to them to load on some programmes and then will be sent back to me for the final switchover of data  etc. I’m really quite excited at the prospect of this new computer which should be that much easier for me to use and as an added bonus has its own web-cam built in, whereas at the moment I’ve got a loose one which wobbles about on the top of the laptop, and with my weak hands and arms am unable to control and focus properly, and for that reason is not at all satisfactory.

Mick e-mailed when he got back to Sweden to say that he was suffering from a wog and cough, which I take to mean some sort of virus flu. He obviously hopes that he was not contagious when he was here as it is very important that I don’t catch anything like that and he has advised that, at the first signs, I asked my GP to prescribe vitamins C and antibiotics.

A new golf joke for you. Saturday Golf.htm

23 January 2011

Mick left at 6.30 this morning, waving at me through my respirator and grasping my hand in farewell. I was in my study chair, shortly  after my shower,  to watch the Australian innings for the third of the ODI cricket internationals against Australia.

I had, of course, been listening overnight and heard England bowled out for 214 after 48 overs. The low score was due to a lack lustre performance by our batsmen except for Trott who ended 84 not out but sadly ran out of partners. In fact, despite England’s low score it was quite an exciting game until the last few overs of the Australian innings. In the event, they won in the 46th over with four wickets in hand. Rather like the English team the Australian batsmen failed to shine, saved only by Haddin’s 54 and David Hussey’s 70 not out. That puts the enemy three up in the series.

More dramas again with the donkey. ‘My lovely’ went out early this morning only to find  her lying down yet again and unable to stand up and eat. Despite several attempts by Alice she failed to get onto her feet after risking the possibility of Mouse falling and trapping her underneath. Unable to communicate with me, or indeed anyone else, I would have been seriously concerned for her had she not reappeared within half an hour I suppose I would have had to ring the police and the fire service but fortunately that contingency did not arise. In the event, after a number of phone calls to various friends and visits to neighbours, Alice she was unable to get  help To right the creature. It’s bad enough calling in local help to pick me up with start on the donkey as well I think we could lose friends very quickly. Clearly this cannot go on and hopefully will be resolved one way or the other when ‘Jane the vet’ comes early tomorrow morning.

My dear daughter-in-law Kimberly’s birthday today. I telephoned my congratulations but had to leave a message on the answerphone.