Getting paid and getting fit

Newbold Comyn, February 2021

Two more of my vaccination shifts were cancelled, and I wondered whether all our customers have had their second jab so the clinic isn't needed any more. But I looked at the online calendar of available shifts and signed up to one that hadn't been cancelled, so we'll see whether that goes ahead. If it does, maybe I'll get a feel for whether I'll be needed in future.

One of the reasons for finding out is because... Big Announcement... I'm leaving the diabetes job. In just two more weeks, I'll be fully unemployed, apart from vaccinating and Mr MXF and helping mum and dad and the LTRP and everything I'm doing for the Buddhists. Leaving the substantive post but carrying on vaccinating has highlighted some 'interesting' aspects of NHS bureaucracy. 

The main thing is that I haven't yet been paid for vaccinating. Because my first shift was right at the end of February I expected the time to be added on to March, so I wasn't altogether surprised when it didn't appear in my payslip at the end of March. But when there was nothing in my April payslip either, I telephoned a nice lady in the payroll department. She checked it out, and agreed that yes, I hadn't been paid, and one reason was that a significant form had not been completed. She sent it to me, I completed it, and sent it back. But then there was another problem - a 'job' had not been created against which I could be paid, and I was directed to the 'Temporary Staff Services' department which is responsible for this.

Another nice lady in the TSS dept took my details and told me that her systems showed that I had been paid and I should check with payroll. When I recited the form of words that I had been given by the payroll lady she checked again, and this time agreed that I needed a job to be created, and sent me another form, which I duly signed and sent back. Then she sent me a different copy of the same form, and then a third version, and encouraged me to give her a call, which I did. No answer. I emailed back and was asked for my mobile number, which I gave with the proviso that I couldn't answer until a later time because of having to talk to patients. At the end of the clinic I saw that I'd had two missed calls during the time I'd given as being unavailable.

Anyway, I finally got hold of someone who explained what all the versions of the form meant, and I signed the one that I think I was supposed to sign and sent that one back. I was told that it might be too late to catch payroll for the end of May, so I might be looking forward to a bumper month in June. And if vaccination is ending, that might be the last of it.

My physical fitness is probably the worst it's been in my adult life. The knee is feeling much better but the hip is still playing up, and I'm certain it's because I'm not moving about enough. I haven't done any badminton for over a year, and I had to stop running in the autumn because of the knee problem, so apart from a bit of walking about once a week I've been doing nothing. So when my friend suggested we go and bat a shuttlecock about in the park I jumped at the chance, and while it couldn't be described as badminton because it was so windy (we were lucky if we could manage a rally lasting three shots) it was nice to feel I'd moved about a bit. We only played for an hour or so but I definitely felt it the next day, which is a good sign, especially as the hip felt so much better.

The same friend also recommended an online yoga class, which I finally tried this week. I could manage about half of the moves, and after an hour I was exhausted. I've never done yoga before but I quite liked it, and there's certainly a lot of scope for improvement.

In other badminton news, we had a message from the school where my Monday club used to play, saying that they were increasing their health and safety measures and before we would be allowed back we would have to show them our risk assessment, our health and safety policy, and evidence of our first aider's training. We wrote back saying that we are a bunch of friends playing badminton and we don't have any of these. I'm still doing the Buddhist class on Mondays so it doesn't affect me at the moment, but if the school where I used to play on Thursday is the same then it's not looking good for badminton.

A short break

Badgell's Wood, September 2020

Well, the damp man returned and reassured me that the plumbers could proceed, but for the next 10 days I was due to be at work and then away for my last camping trip of the season. Then the plumbers notified me that the tiler they recommend can't fit me in until late October. I've asked for them to finish everything else as soon as possible in case of more hitches on the rocky path to wet room bliss. No word of response to my plea so far. This has become a familiar pattern, but I'm getting very used to showering in the bath.

My camping trip was a response to the lack of other holiday options, and once I'd settled on the dates I invited others to join me, but they weren't available. I also chose the campsite to be in the home locality of a friend that I hoped to meet, but said friend was also away at the time. So I prepared myself for one of my solitary holidays, and spent a lot of the time reading meditation books and doing meditation, and walking and a bit of cooking and eating. The weather was absolutely perfect throughout, and the campsite shower was better than my shower options at home. I did meet a friend for lunch, and went to the cinema for the first time since Covid - on Friday just after lunch there were only 3 of us in the screening, so it didn't feel too risky.

Badminton still hasn't started up for me, although other clubs that play in a leisure centre have returned. Both my clubs meet in school halls, and schools are just trying to work out how to keep their students safe and manage all the requirements without wanting to worry about extra people on site, so there's no sign that we'll be back for a while yet. I continue to run for about 35 minutes up to three times a week, so I won't be completely unfit should we ever play again. I arranged a socially distanced picnic at the weekend with the Monday club, so at least we still recognise one another.

Trosley Country Park, September 2020

Swollen and bruised

Munich, December 2019

The main thing that is preoccupying my thoughts is the stupid front door. Despite Ilf's attentions it swelled up again so I had a go at shaving some more off - there won't be much door left once it gets dry again. Having had enough of this game I gave Doors and Windows Ulf a call and he came round to talk about replacing it with one that a) won't swell b) won't need repainting c) will fit better and reduce drafts and d) will be more secure. So I know a bit more about different types of door than I did before (timber, uPVC and composite) but have still received no quote at the time of writing.

The same swelling problem has happened to the timber side gate, so the new Lady Gardener had a bit of trouble with that. Yes, I've got a new Lady Gardener! She spent two hours weeding and while she was working I finished the brick border and we talked about how she's not a teacher any more, and what I should do about my herbs. I think it will go well.

And the eighth Gulloebl Film Festival took place and was a success as ever, although I had a bit of a problem with some of the films on Saturday, which were Blades of Glory (not my kind of humour), The Apartment (a classic movie which is unfortunately so full of sexism, misogyny and let's call it 'an old-fashioned view of a woman's place in the workplace and relationships' with just a touch of racism at the end that I didn't enjoy it as much as I should if I had ignored all those things and just imagined myself back in 1960), and Sexy Beast (which made me so tense that my jaw ached). All the other films were lovely, though, with my favourite (aside from my all time favourite Marvellous) being The Sting.

On Wednesday I had a Ladies badminton match, and Thursday night was a match for the Mixed team, and before it even started while I was warming up I tripped and had an enormous comedy fall, bouncing off the wall and landing on my side. I was fine apart from a grazed knuckle and a huge bruise on my hip. I'm glad I'm still tough enough to bounce rather than break. And we won both matches, so I suppose it was worth it.

Marmalade does not count as a portion of fruit

Botanic Garden, Rio de Janeiro, April 2019

I suffered for 10 days with a cold I caught from a Doctor; that's the last time I help him out with a challenging patient. Not really, he's the Doctor I chose to keep when I reduced my working hours. But he could have kept his cold to himself.

Luckily illness didn't stop me from accompanying mum and dad to the last wedding I'm likely to be invited to - both nephews now done and the niece declaring she's not getting married. All involved seem to have escaped without catching anything from me. As weddings go it was a good one - a Humanist ceremony in a field out in the open, so a good thing the weather was fine. Afterwards there was a tent for food and dancing, but as the sun went down it got really cold, and obviously the main players were a generation younger than me so the music wasn't from my era. They had laid on a whole lot of attractions though - props for photographs, pick and mix sweets, a bar making burgers and bacon sandwiches, a fire pit with marshmallows to toast, the wedding cake, a mountain of cheese, more doughnuts than you can imagine and probably more that I've forgotten. It was nice. Mum and dad stayed for the ceremony and some nibbles afterwards but headed off in a taxi before the partying started.

The tax return is done! Also Eurostar booked for ski trip #2 after a whole lot of hassle with logging in and passwords. I'm not convinced the Eurostar website will ever work for me again so I've printed tickets and emailed them to myself just to be sure. Ski trip #1 is all arranged by someone else so I don't need to do anything much. Next job will be booking the bus to the resort from the train station and then it's ski hire and I'll be ready.

The planning and arrangements for all these ski trips and another visit to the Christmas Market in Munich and a week-long retreat in October have been disrupted by my changed working hours. Annual leave in the NHS is incredibly complicated: it is calculated on an hourly basis and you have to include Bank Holidays in the allowance. So if you work 10 hours on a Monday and 1 hour per day for the rest of the week, you have to book 10 hours off when a Bank Holiday falls on a Monday, but conversely if a Bank Holiday falls on a day that you don't work you can use those hours for leave on another day. Swings and roundabouts.

The hours allocated for leave are also calculated pro-rata for weekly hours worked, and the year for which leave is calculated runs from April to March. I halved my working hours at the end of July, which is only a third of the way through the year, so in the second two-thirds of the year I was given half as many leave hours compared with my allowance in the first third of the year. My problem was that I took an awful lot of my year's allowance in the first third of the year, what with the trip to Brazil and the music festivals. When the allowance was calculated for me (there was no chance of me being able to work it out for myself) in August I was presented with a remaining allowance of 1.75 hours up to the end of the year, whilst having committed to two ski holidays requiring 27 hours off. And I was fortunate that Christmas and New Year holidays are not on Monday or Tuesday this year, otherwise I would have ended up in negative balance. Luckily I've been allowed to juggle my working days and take the days off that I need by working extra days in December, January and February.

I have started to use my days off for leisure pursuits as well as all the admin and household tasks that are still needed. Last Friday I took myself off to Birmingham. One of the reasons was that I needed to exchange a defective pan at John Lewis, but then I had lunch at my favourite Cafe Soya, and afterwards I went to the Museum and Art Gallery for the first time in the nearly 20 years I've been living and working here. I didn't have time to see all that much, which leaves scope for another exciting visit, but I did see the Staffordshire Hoard, which is both more and less impressive than I was expecting. Less impressive because all the pieces on display were smaller than I expected, but more impressive due to the sheer quantity of tiny fragments that were retrieved from a ploughed field., totalling 5 kg of gold and 1.4 kg of silver. Now I have looked at the excellent website (link here) I have to say that the information provided at the exhibition itself isn't great.

Another new responsibility for me this year is to be Captain of the first mixed team for badminton club 2. The main tasks are to assemble a team for each match, collect match fees from each player, and register the score if we win. Which sounds straightforward but is usually quite a lot of hassle - I can't play in our first match, and all the men are proving remarkably unreliable so early in the season. But anyway, Mr M, I iz a Captain now, and therefore fully qualified to adjudicate on fruit portions in marmalade and other conserves.

"I love you this much"

Recent events

Amazonia, April 2019

Lola II and Mr M have visited Lola Towers for the purpose of setting up the Gulloebl Film Festival (Leamington). This is very exciting and I have now chosen the films and started writing down all the things I need to organise, from Friday's canapes to compiling parking information. Mr M is still working on the spreadsheets and our new online booking site is nearly ready to go live.

In badminton news, both my badminton clubs have held their AGMs. My Monday club's AGM was in the pub for an hour after the end of the Monday badminton session, and my Thursday club's was in a Rugby club and also involved a competitive skittles tournament and fish and chips.

I am 'Social Secretary' for my lovely Monday club, which just means that I organise activities and social events whenever I feel like it. My 'report' at the AGM consisted of a Post-It note with the dates of all the events I could remember from the last 12 months. We have a very efficient Secretary who added the rest of the detail. They have asked me for the same social programme again this year which leaves me with a dilemma - everyone enjoyed the Disc Golf but me, so should I organise it but not attend myself, or just pick something else?

The badminton side of things is not going very well for this club - we only have seven permanent paying members, some more who 'pay and play', and our funds are seriously depleted to the point that the viability of the club is at risk. Having said that, the men's team won their Division in the League and will be promoted. We don't have enough players for any other teams and barely enough for the men's.

My Thursday badminton club is doing much better than my Monday club, with a healthy membership and about six teams in various leagues. Last year we had an informal agreement that if one of the other ladies captained the 1st Mixed team last year, I would take it over this year. It really is about time I put something back into this club and it isn't a very difficult or time-consuming job, especially as we have six fairly committed players and quite a few who will stand in if needed.

Buddhism news: apart from the regular Tuesday Buddhist group locally, I've been going to quite a lot of Thursday sessions in Birmingham. This is partly because I enjoy it but it's also strategic - my local group is going to have a stall at next month's Peace Festival in Leamington and I want to try and make sure we are supported, which I am hoping will be easier if I am a known face.

Then there's work. Work is challenging, mostly in a good way, but sometimes not. I have been trying to get my Team Leader to have a conversation with the DSNs I work with since January and she has steadfastly avoided this until very recently. There was a full and frank exchange of views and maybe her future plans may reflect this. I can say no more at the moment.

I have also been up to visit H+B and brought back some more of H's writings. I have offered to create a basic blog for him but he has to decide whether this would count as 'publishing' because if he should decide to try and get some material published, they often require it not to have been published elsewhere. I will await his decision.

Lastly, the LTRP continues, as it will probably continue until the end of time. One of the electric lights in my 'new' kitchen has failed, and as these lights consist of expensive sealed units that have to be replaced as a whole and which I was assured 'never fail' I contacted Ulf to ask for a replacement under guarantee. This led to a confusing series of messages because my communication that 'one of the kitchen lights has blown' was interpreted as meaning one of the glazed roof light sealed units. I am still waiting for a date when the light will be replaced. Apart from that, I have now cleaned up most of the plaster dust and re-polished the living room floor, making the room habitable again but potentially lethal to walk about in socks.

Week off

Auditorium, February 2019

I often joke that I work harder on my day off than I do at work. This has been the literal truth this week, when I have knuckled down to do jobs that have been waiting some time for my attention, and it occupied so much of the week that I only managed to see three films. Here are a selection of the 'highlights'.

LTRP

The carpet fitters were due on Monday, so on Sunday I moved all the furniture out that hadn't already been moved and took up the remaining remnants of carpet and underlay, cutting them up to make it easier to shift them. This was much harder work and took much longer than I was expecting.

Monday: carpet time! for the Auditorium and upstairs hall. The two fitters arrived as scheduled and the work went without a hitch, although as anticipated they had to take the door off because it needs shaving a little off the bottom to go over the carpet. We had a useful discussion about how to manage the join at the top of the stairs and access to the cellar trapdoor in the Auditorium, they cleaned up after themselves and I made some brownies for them.

I'd been wondering for a while how difficult it was to make vegan cake, so I got a brownie recipe off the Vegan Society website and had a go. I had to make several substitutions - golden caster sugar for brown sugar, black treacle for golden syrup and ground almonds for desiccated coconut, but it was dead easy, quick, and tasted fine.

The carpet fitters also helped me move the enormous TV back into the Auditorium - I could do the rest myself, except for the piano. The carpet looks and feels absolutely wonderful, but no time to admire it on Monday night - straight out to badminton.

No time to admire the carpet on Tuesday either because I'd got in touch with Olf the builder - he who took on the garage, the first job of the LTRP, so long ago. He came round first thing to talk about various outside jobs - paving, pointing, rendering, brickwork and the 'verandah' - the sloping roof attached to the garden side of the house, which has started to disintegrate. We spent an hour going round assessing what's needed and I'm now waiting for his estimate.

Badminton

Apart from the usual club night and a match, there was a badminton Chinese meal social event. I love a Chinese meal as a group because you simply can't have a decent selection of dishes when there's just one of you. The match: we lost, and it included a game that my partner and I agreed was the worst we'd ever played.

Shopping

I planned on doing a load of 'shopping in person' (as opposed to online) on Thursday, and I succeeded in buying a suitcase (my first!), ski socks, casters for the sofabad (now that it's standing on carpet), a protective cover for my tablet, and the binding of two carpet offcuts so they can be used as mats to cover the trapdoor to the cellar in the Auditorium. While I was out in town, as usual I found a reason to visit the greengrocer, only to discover that he was planning to close the shop in only a few weeks' time. This is indeed tragic news.

Friday was for online jobs. I made some progress towards buying a widget that will connect my hosepipe to the external tap, hoover bags and pull rings for the trapdoor. I still have to attack the holiday insurance and the energy supplier, but the biggest job of all that has been hanging over me since last July is my big trip to Brazil. If I'd known how much work it would entail I might have thought twice.

I've spent hours on this, and so has the travel agent, but it is now settled. I made a quick dash to the doctor's surgery to fill in the form about travel health and vaccinations which acquired a sense of urgency when I realised there are only seven weeks to go, along with a realisation that I have to put in my request for leave for work because they can get very shirty if lead times are less than six weeks, especially if patients' appointments have to be moved.

Buddhists

Tuesday was the usual meditation group. In my absence the introductory course had attracted twelve newcomers, of whom five returned this week - almost as many as the old timers. They benefited from the brownies that the carpet fitters left.

Earlier that day I had visited the school where I play badminton on Mondays to look at hiring one of their rooms for the Buddhist group, and here is where I admit that I have been co-opted onto the Committee, despite my resolution not to get too involved in the organisation. The trouble is that the group was dwindling - although many people are associated with it, attendance at Tuesday meetings was down to an average of six, which isn't enough to meet the cost of the hall if everyone gave the suggested donation. Anyway, all involved in the Committee are very glad to have fresh blood, and I am drawing upon my advanced skills acquired in organising social events for the badminton club in order to organise social events for the Buddhists, as well as offering my house as an alternative meditation location.

The first social event was tea and cake in a cafe on Saturday afternoon. Despite my advanced organising skills the event attracted only myself, the other social organiser with whom I'm sharing the job, his wife (who isn't part of the practising group), and another couple of committee members and their four year old son. Not a huge success, and it seems likely that there are far fewer people than I hoped who are interested in the social aspect of the group. Our second social event is going to be a walk, so we'll see how we get on with that.

And the rest

Off up the horrible M6 I went on Wednesday to visit lovely H+B, where I was royally treated to lunch and cake as well as reading some of H's recent forays into creative writing, which were all very good, rather entertaining, and as his group has commented, 'clever'. A bit too clever for me; H had to accompany me on one particular piece to explain all the jokes (I think I got about two thirds of them on my own). Would anyone else know that Prior Art is a reason not to award a patent? Or recognise a line from the poem 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'?

Films: due to the large amount of admin and other activities I hardly had time for the film-fest that a whole week off work at home should have produced. I did manage to get to the cinema to watch the Oscar-nominated film Green Book about a black pianist touring the Deep South of America in the 1950s, and I watched The Commune on iPlayer - a Danish film set in the 1970s about a bunch of people who decide to cohabit in a large house one of them has inherited. The last film was from my DVD subscription: Journey's End - a first world war story that was originally a play, ending as most first world war stories do.

And to complete the account of almost everything I did for a week, there was also the first music group of the year, which was a little disappointing as I'm not that keen on the choice of music this time, or the arrangement. My fellow baritone sax player, however, is very pleased at the simpler arrangement - he is an improviser and struggled with all the notes in previous arrangements.

Not yet Christmas

Adhisthana, June 2018

Lots going on as usual. Here's a rundown of recent activity, not including trips to Parcelforce in Coventry and Christmas markets in Munich. Those will have to wait for another time.

LTRP

The new television is up and working! I had to phone a friend to help me lift it onto the table, and after I'd connected it all up it didn't seem to want to find the Internet or the sound bar. So, ostrich-like, I left it alone to see if it cured itself. I did have a look at the manual and fixed the sound bar by changing where the cables plug in, and miraculously it found the Internet without any further intervention, so all is well at the moment. Let's hope it stays that way.

So with that little project completed I have visited a carpet supplier of national repute and a local shop to have a little look at my auditorium carpet options. I just want a plain dark grey carpet, which I thought would limit the choices a bit, but even so there were seventeen different carpet options in the big shop which seem to be suitable, and no obvious way to choose between them. There is a free sample service so I asked for four samples to be sent, and we'll see how I get on. The local shop suggested just one option, which seems just as unsatisfactory.

Work

I went to an evening meeting about Pancreatic Exocrine Insufficiency, which wasn't very useful but there was a nice dinner and I sat next to a very chatty doctor. Diabetes is a disorder of the pancreatic endocrine system (insulin is an endocrine hormone), but the pancreas also produces enzymes as part of its exocrine activity. These are primarily lipase, amylase and protease to digest fat, starch and protein, and it seems that this function often fails in people with diabetes. Essentially the treatment of PEI is Pancreatic Enzyme Replacement Therapy, i.e. swallowing large capsules of enzymes along with meals and snacks so that they replace the enzymes that the pancreas is no longer producing. The main lecture was about symptoms and diagnosis rather than management, so I now know how prevalent it is in people with diabetes, but no more about what to do about it.

My Team Leader was also there, and she brought me up to speed on what is going on with the DESMOND Type 2 education programme in our region. I mentioned previously that the Clinical Commissioning Group is getting very 'hands-on' with DESMOND, and it seems that courses have a very poor attendance rate and keep getting cancelled in the main area covered by the NHS Trust I work for. Apparently the Trust's Clinical Director for Diabetes (who is also Clinical Director for another couple of specialities) had a very uncomfortable meeting with people from the CCG. I don't have a great deal of time for our Clinical Director because he seems to show no interest whatsoever in directing clinicians, clinics or anything else that is clinical, so this was a very interesting move on the part of the CCG. I don't know whether anything will come of it, but it's testament to my new Team Leader's dogged persistence that this meeting even came about.

Talking of the CCG and education: I had to attend one of the CCG's regular meetings about education for people with diabetes in order to present the results of my evaluation of our short Carbs and Insulin course, which we're calling CANDI (see what we did there?) This was one of the last times I had an idea at work before I became determined to have no more ideas, and it has resulted in a lot of work for me but not much progress. The results show that the people who attended got a lot out of it subjectively, but objective measures don't show much improvement. I then compared the objective measures of CANDI with those from a similar population who attended the longer 4-day carb counting course, and those were no better. What happens next is anyone's guess, but now that we have our tenacious Team Leader I suppose she will have to decide, so I've put it on the agenda for our next team meeting. Which is the day after Boxing Day when I will have even less than my usual motivation to talk about matters at work.

Badminton

Matches and club nights continue twice a week, My duties as Social Secretary led me to try and arrange a 'Not Christmas Social' in November so that we wouldn't get caught up in all the pre-Christmas shenanigans. I offered various dates so we could include the maximum number of people, and Friday 30th November was chosen. Unfortunately in the chosen venue, this night was already designated as a pre-Christmas shenanigan, so the event became the 'Not Not Christmas Social' and fourteen people came along and enjoyed themselves at a local pub. I had the best vegetarian option I think I've ever had in a pub (a pie with mash and veg).

and the rest

I can't remember exactly how it came about, but Lola II was interviewed for a project focussing on views and opinions and thoughts on childlessness from people who have consciously chosen not to have children. She passed the contact on to me, and this week I was also interviewed. It was very interesting and I'm still mulling over some of the things we discussed.

I went to see mum and dad and this time mum had a great job for me to do. Often the jobs I am called upon to perform involve either the computer or a ladder (there were jobs of those varieties on this visit too), but this time it was all about the sewing machine. As well as using the zigzag option to sew hems in shortened sleeves, we took down the kitchen blinds and shortened them by about a foot, cutting off the dirtiest part and revealing fresh fabric. It all went very well and they look great and it felt like we had really achieved something.

There have obviously been other activities at home and at work, but having ended the weight management effort my weight has obviously gone up by a kilogram. I knew it would because I haven't been feeling hungry lately and there have been celebratory meals and food provided during work events (which always leads me to overeat). Now what shall I do?

More padding

Adhisthana, June 2018

I still haven't managed to get round to writing about the Spanish holiday, so here are some more odds and ends that aren't all that exciting.

Saturday

Music group was on Saturday, and it rained a lot. When I got back home the kitchen roof light was leaking again, so I was on to Ulf in a flash. Doors and Windows Ulf came round on Tuesday while I was in (and while the sun was obstinately shining in a cloudless sky). I was going to impersonate a rainstorm with the hosepipe but discovered that the adaptor to connect the tap to the hose was missing, so we had to resort to a watering can. DaW Ulf failed to find where the water could be getting in, but agreed with me that I couldn't just resign myself to putting out buckets every time it rains, nor could he drop everything and come on over. I plan to get the hosepipe working and do the rain impersonation thing, then take photos or video if I manage to get it leaking again.

Sunday

I finally managed to gather two out of the three of us who are planning a trip to the Christmas Markets in Munich (you may remember last year we went to Dusseldorf), and we booked flights and hotel. Then we went to a comedy gig from German Comedy Ambassador Henning Wehn. The most notable thing about that day was that I served a vegetarian stew that had such an explosive effect on my gastrointestinal tract that I had to apologise to my friend in case she was suffering the same consequences (she said she'd had worse).

Monday

I had a Dietetics final year student with me all day on Monday, on her third and last placement. I was so traumatised by my placements when I was doing my degree that I'm almost useless as a supervisor, as there is no way I will pass any criticism or test the students at all. Unfortunately there was almost nothing going on in my department that day, but we couldn't find anything better anywhere else so I printed out a diabetes tutorial and she was happy to play around with that until the afternoon clinic, when two out of the four scheduled patients didn't turn up. Thankfully the last one was a corker and I went through the A-Z of diabetes with someone who'd had a very poor experience in a nearby hospital, and was very happy with what she received with us. Anyway, the student said she'd enjoyed the day and that's what I was after.

On Monday I also received my flu jab, which was OK at the time but gave me a very tender upper arm for 24 hours. Then in the evening my doubles partner behind me mis-hit a shuttle with tremendous force right into the middle of my back. That night I had trouble finding a comfortable sleeping position.

Tuesday

Apart from the visit from DaW Ulf the most notable event on Tuesday was that while doing a bit of poking about on the Open University website, I came across a free online module all about Greek heroic epic poetry (which is distinct from ordinary epic poetry) focussing specifically on 'The Iliad'. By coincidence I happen to be reading The Iliad at the moment, so I had a look at the module, and it was extremely interesting. Although I did O level Latin at school I don't know a word of Greek, ancient or modern, and this tiny little insight into the rhythms and construction of the first seven lines of the poem as a representative sample of the whole work was absolutely fascinating.

It reminded me slightly of one of the more memorable jokes from Sunday night, when Henning was telling us how his extensive study of English grammar at school taught him to conjugate the verb 'to be' correctly: "I was, you were, he/she was, we were, you were, they were." Now he feels that perhaps he needn't have bothered as common usage suggests: "I was, you was, he/she was, we was, you was, they was."

Wednesday

I realise I've spent quite a lot of time writing this blog post when I could have been writing about the holiday, and I haven't even shared my photos yet. Oh well, I'll get round to it eventually. Probably.

Updates

Adhisthana, June 2018

Pub update - the news is not good. My local councillor replied very promptly, forwarding a message from the Licensing Team Leader. The Deregulation Act 2015 states that:

"Live amplified music is deregulated between 08:00 and 23:00 up to a maximum of 500 people on a premises authorised to sell alcohol for the consumption on the premises."

It was also clarified that the definition of the premises in the license plan extends to the garden outside as well, so I don't have any options unless I wish to make a noise complaint. There is a local 'night noise service' which runs from 9pm to 1am on Friday and Saturday nights and seemingly will come and 'witness the noise and disruption levels first hand'. But I don't want to fall out with my neighbour, and I certainly don't want anything in writing that may affect the sale of my house in future times. And anyway, the music wasn't repeated last Friday.

Bathroom scales update - my BMI this morning was 24.3 kg/m² so still going in the right direction, despite the colleague's leaving do on Friday followed by the weekend's excess. Actually, the family party at the weekend was quite modest and I managed to get the guests to take away most of the leftovers. The best thing about it, apart from seeing my lovely family and enjoying their approval of the LTRP, is that leading up to the event I cleaned the house more thoroughly than I think I ever have before, which I continue to enjoy.

Badminton update - I ended up having to go to the League EGM because the two people in the club more qualified than I came up with much better excuses not to attend than I could think of on the spot. I didn't really know why the EGM had been called except that the new Chair of the League thinks that badminton is in a fatal decline and wants to halt it using various measures which are regularly defeated when proposed at the AGM. So the reason for the EGM was to come up with a different, 'fairer' voting regime for meetings so that 'progress' could be made, and it was all over in only 90 minutes which I consider to be a good outcome. In case you're interested (but why would you be?) the new voting regime gives each team in the league one vote up to a maximum of four votes per club, with a voting majority of two thirds.

LTRP update - the lovely tiler is on site as I type, and the plumber has just departed having reinstated the fancy stopcock device and repainted the skirting with one coat. If I am lucky this will represent the final work on the kitchen and it will be complete, except I suppose for the dead washing machine which I have made no progress towards replacing.

Trouble under the sink

Düsseldorf, November 2017

Notable events over the last week or so have been scarce. There was a bank holiday weekend, when I journeyed south for dad's 85th birthday celebration - we pay so little attention to birthdays that one of the guests didn't actually know it was a birthday celebration at all. Briefly, there were candles.

I went to a gig, which was good. I watched some DVDs on my huge screen, including a Blu-Ray DVD, but I'm not sure that I could tell the difference between this and an ordinary DVD. I went to the dentist, where they sweetly complimented me on my efficient brushing while despairing of my continuing decrepitude. I reassured them that on the whole I'm in pretty good nick, but if they want a culprit they can blame my genetic heritage.

On Saturday I started considering the tiling situation for the kitchen, and spent more than three hours in two shops (although about half an hour of that was on the phone to Lola II). The best advice of the whole day was that rather than looking at the traditional glass splashback behind the hob for somewhere between £150 and £250, I could just buy a single 60x60 cm tile costing a tenner. A lovely tiler visited and has sent me a quote.

I have reconnoitred a local car boot sale on the advice of a badminton-playing friend who regularly sells his plants there. It takes place every Sunday between May and September, and cars start queueing for the best spots from 6 a.m. Alongside the big house clearance vans there are people sitting at single tables with just the sort of thing I'd like to get rid of. It costs £10 for a place as a seller and most of the junk isn't worth more than 50p or a pound, so I'll have to gather absolutely everything and hope to make my money back in one hit because there's no way I'm going to do it more than once.

In badminton news, I was invited to go to a session on Sunday to try out with the Warwickshire County Veterans, which sounds more impressive than it actually was. There wasn't any element of selection because they seemed desperate for players (although I'm sure if I'd been awful it would have been different), but the standard was a bit higher than mine and I had to work hard. I'm not sure I want to make the commitment - all the matches will be on Sundays and there's usually a good deal of travel seeing as it's a county league. I did meet a lovely lady whom I hadn't seen for six years since I left the club where she plays, but I also met one of the people who were the reason I left that club.

So it was on Sunday afternoon after all this effort that I noticed the skirting board in the utility room was stained. Pulling the plinth board away from under the sink, I found A LOT of water and a significant drip from a pipe in the most inaccessible place in the whole house (i.e where the stopcock is inside the stupid narrow cupboard). Shutting down the stopcock didn't stop the drip and I contacted the plumber who'd installed the whole affair just a few months ago. Given that it was clear this had been going on for some time I decided not to treat it as an emergency, but the plumber did turn up on Monday and diagnose the problem as a failure of the fancy valve that was supposed to mean I don't have to reach the stopcock itself to turn off the water. We'll have to wait for it to dry out a bit before putting it all back together again.

The eleventh week

There's been a lot of non-LTRP activity which I can't be bothered to put in a separate post. For example, I have been to the optician and will be getting new varifocal glasses with stronger near vision assistance. Because of my complex lens prescription I am entitled to an NHS voucher of about £37 towards the cost, which sounds lovely until you find out that the total cost of the specs including free frames is close to £400. Until I needed the varifocals my prescription hadn't changed for many years, so the optician's cheerful comment that my current glasses had lasted for four years was not as well-received as it might be. Only four years!

Musical activity - Lola II, Mr M, Cousin Y and I went to sing karaoke and had a great time. One of the highlights (and there were many) was Lola II's discovery that alongside the traditional karaoke pop songs you could also get Bernard Cribbins' 'Right Said Fred' and Victoria Woods' 'The Ballad of Barry and Freda'. I also took part in the clarinet and saxophone ensembles' Christmas concert, which went very well. Then there were two Christmas dinners, one for work and the other for badminton club 2. Badminton club 1 had a tournament which I was partly responsible for organising, but the formula that had worked so well in previous years went a bit wrong so we kept having to re-write the rules as we went along. And I went to see comedian Tom Allen and the film Paddington 2, but not at the same time, and both were good.

So you'll probably want to know where we are with the LTRP. This week saw a first for Team Ulf - something did not go according to plan. Electrician Ulf was due to visit on Monday to connect the appliances and the last few lights, but I got home at the end of the day and things looked suspiciously similar to how I had left them at the beginning of the day. After some investigation it emerged that Electrician Ulf has a chest infection, but was still hoping to do the job towards the end of the week.

Tuesday brought a new team of two to lay the flooring, whom I am happily naming Blf 1 and Blf 2 now that I have run out of vowels. The Blfs arrived at an unspeakably early hour on my day off, prepared the surface, mixed up the levelling compound, carefully spread it over the floor and left me with full instructions for the following 24 hours.

I got Blf 1 to check the calculation for floor tiles (which I had already bought), and he sent me off on Tuesday to buy some more because it looked very tight and would be fairly disastrous if they ran out. He also told me the story of a big job they had done which for some reason I couldn't quite follow had to be done from start to finish without a break. It had taken 31 hours, at the end of which Blf could barely function and was hallucinating. "They were very grateful," he said. "They put a very nice comment on my website."

The Blfs were gone by 9 a.m., after which I was instructed to wait until the levelling compound had set and then introduce a space heater which would allow all moisture to evaporate before they came again at a similar unspeakably early hour on Wednesday and finished the job. It was a good thing I had bought the extra tiles, because some of them were needed.

Electrician Ulf was well enough to come back on Thursday, and discovered that the hob had been wrongly specified in the plans so that it needed a 32A rather than the 13A supply that had been prepared for it. He managed to run a new cable without having to tunnel through the fresh plaster but it could have been very much more disruptive. I was also delighted to welcome not only Ulf but Sons of Ulf too for a final reunion to finish the stairs, the skirting, door architraves, and rebuild a bit of the garden that had been destroyed. They even put up the airer in the utility although one of the pulleys had completely seized, and generally behaved very generously in doing things that weren't strictly their job. And, with perfect timing, they finished the biscuits.

The kitchen Ylfs have been the least satisfactory of all the tradesmen, some of which was not their fault, but in several respects was simply poorly executed. They made no allowance for the thickness of flooring when fitting plinths so the dishwasher door won't open, the cupboard layout in the utility room makes it all but impossible to reach the stopcock, and the hob specification error was down to Ylf as well. I will be feeding this back to them in the New Year, and I assume they will be coming back to finish up when the replacement parts arrive.

So it's all done just in time for Christmas, except for those few missing pieces of the kitchen installation. Operating the ovens seems extremely complicated, but I have done some grilling (fish fingers) and used the hob (it boils water very quickly indeed). The task of washing everything before it can find a new place in the kitchen is continuing slowly. I only have one casserole dish and one large frying pan that are suitable for the new hob, so buying saucepans will probably be my first task for the New Year. Now I'm off to celebrate Christmas and then do some walking over the New Year. I wonder which LTRP project I shall take on in 2018?

December 2017

The build-up to the building

Shipley Church, September 2017

What a week. I've been clearing out the kitchen properly because of the building work starting very soon, and I've set up the alternative kitchen in the living room to try it out. It's working OK and I'm sure I shall soon start to remember where the bin and the kettle are now located. Mugs are on the shelf with the CDs, cereal is in the cupboard with the music system, decaff teabags are in the next room and I've bought several packets of biscuits because I'm assuming builders eat biscuits and I want them to like me so they will do a really good job.

Meanwhile there have been some extra stresses at work. On Monday one nurse and the doctor were both ill, and the remaining team was led by a nurse who, let's say, is not an enthusiastic worker. So she made the receptionist cancel all the patients for the day, and the doctor was not pleased when he found out. The nurse won't care, though.

More kitchen clearing on Tuesday, then on Wednesday I went to a meeting convened by Diabetes UK and NHS England all about self-management through Structured Education. I really, really need to think more carefully about whether I should go to these meetings. It was attended by several people working for Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) from different areas in the West Midlands, and by 'service providers' like myself.

I listened to an account of a really good way of delivering self-management education to people with Type 2 Diabetes in Worcestershire, while thinking how it could never happen in my region because all the key people are all too busy picking fights with one another. But I spent a bit of time talking to one of our Senior Commissioners, but there are so many administrative layers between that level and my own that it really seems to make no difference to me what is decided at the top, and similarly there seems to be no accountability to Commissioners about what I decide to do. It just frustrates me that I don't understand how the system works and nobody seems able to explain it to me.

Evening activities added to the running about that I did, with the usual badminton (including the first match of the new season), my new Buddhism class (more about that soon), and, unusually, some social activities.

On Friday I went to a Charity Music Quiz in aid of one of my colleagues who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. It's a very sad story: she and her family were devastated by the diagnosis and did what many families in their position would do - clutch at straws. Faced with their oncologist's pessimistic prognosis they found a clinic in Germany which offered a treatment costing £50,000 for the first cycle (I think three cycles were recommended) after an initial fee of £17,000 just to look at the biopsy samples.

So they embarked upon a massive fundraising effort including local newspaper and radio coverage and many events and sponsored activities. Thankfully during this period the oncologist was persuaded to do a bit of research on their behalf, and an alternative but comparable treatment has been found in this country for a lot less money. But still a lot of money.

The quiz was part of this fundraising effort, and although it was on a Friday night with colleagues from work, both of which would normally have meant I would have taken care to avoid it, I signed up for the sake of my colleague. It wasn't a bad evening, and our team did quite well - I even contributed one or two answers. There was a raffle at the end which landed me a bottle of gin, but there were ten rounds in the quiz plus the raffle and I didn't get home until midnight.

The weekend was full of preparation for the builders squeezed in alongside more social events. Astonishingly, I found someone who wanted the kitchen cupboards! So on Saturday I welcomed a man and his nephew with their not-very-capacious estate car, who proceeded to take all the cupboard doors and a couple of the shelf units. Despite seeming a little suspicious about the whole deal at the start, by the time they drove off I was invited to drop in to visit any time I happened to be in their neighbourhood.

My monthly music group was on Saturday afternoon, and then in the evening I went to a local venue because a friend was playing a gig there - another late night (but not as late as the quiz night), and a walk on Sunday with the Meetup group which was delightful. The weather was so warm that we could sit outside at the pub stop, and after the walk I visited Charlecote Mill - a working water mill which was having an open day. So another long day, then back to work on Monday, more badminton on Monday night, and then...

The Builders Arrived.

Festival

The East Pointers, August 2017

I had plenty to do during the Bank Holiday weekend what with the Shrewsbury Folk Festival, another dental appointment, a trip north and trying to grapple further with the LTRP. I disposed of the debris from the garden before getting packed and ready to go to Shrewsbury. I arrived there around noon, thinking I would be among the early birds, but the steward at the festival campsite said "We've already been open for five hours - you'll probably have to camp over there."

'Over there' was a little bit further from the action, but still very close by. In the past my preferred festival has been in Cambridge, which I first attended more than 30 years ago. Cambridge Folk Festival has grown and grown, from a couple of stages and a bit of camping to a huge event sponsored by Radio 2 where tickets are sold out within days (or sometimes hours). The last time I was there was for my 50th birthday, and it was crowded and difficult to navigate about the site, and overflow camping (which is where I would normally go) is a bus ride or a very long walk away.

Compared with that experience, Shrewsbury was amazing. The overflow camping being very close was a bonus, so I pitched the tent and wandered over to the main site to get my wristband and a programme and check out the layout. The stages are inside marquees which weren't yet open, but I caught a glimpse and was surprised and slightly disappointed to see it laid out with seating! Although I don't like sitting on the ground, I do like dancing. How would this work?

Anyway, there was enough time to wander into Shrewsbury town centre (again, much closer than Cambridge) before coming back to the start of the music at about 5pm. Despite my scepticism, the seating was the perfect arrangement - I didn't have to sit on the ground, but there was a section at the front in the main tent specifically for those who wanted to get closer to the bands and dance. So there I was, for my favourite Oysterband, right at the front in the middle when the lead singer came out into the crowd. I happened to meet him later in the weekend, carrying a pint. I didn't realise it until the close of the festival, but he is a local resident and a patron and supporter of the event.

So it was altogether a great improvement on the Cambridge experience, the weather was fine, and the bands were (mostly) wonderful too. I saw a few Canadian and French bands as well as home-grown talent, nearly all unfamiliar but I'd go and see them again if they happened to be touring. Particular highlights were La Machine, The East Pointers, Le Vent du Nord and Daphne's Flight. And, of course, Oysterband. I'll definitely be going back next year.

The following weekend I went to High Wycombe to see the English National Badminton competition. Unfortunately none of the big name players was there, perhaps because the World Championships had taken place just the previous week, but there was enough to see to keep me occupied for the day. I saw the quarter- and semi-finals on Saturday, but didn't go back for the finals on Sunday.

At work I covered the ante-natal clinic for a colleague who was on holiday. I think there were twelve appointments altogether (one DNA), up to 30 minutes each, for women who have been diagnosed in the past week. This was their first appointment about the diagnosis of gestational diabetes, so they each saw the nurse first. She explained the diagnosis and its consequences and gave them a blood glucose meter and lots of paperwork, then passed them on to me where I said pretty much the same thing eleven times. By the end I had completely lost track of what I had said to whom, but I think it went OK. I don't quite know how my colleague copes with this every week - once was enough for me.

The only other item of note is that my iron count was too low to donate blood this week - oh dear, but also, hooray! All the virtuous smugness of doing a good deed without actually having to go through with it, and my haemoglobin level was low but still within the normal range so I'm not anaemic. I was also given a leaflet giving me all the advice that I am used to giving out to patients...

I work a bit harder for a change

My life recently is contained neatly in just five categories: LTRP, Badminton, Garden, Buddhism, and Work. I don't think there's much else gone on in the past week except eating and sleeping. Note that Music and Running do not feature - Music starts again in September, but Running may never make a further appearance. Holidays, Camping and Travel are imminent though - I'm looking forward to several trips coming up soon.

LTRP

I met the kitchen man Ylf again, hopefully for the last time. I have selected and specified everything I can think of - plinths (I do love that word), units, doors, handles, worktops, 'upstand' (where the worktop extends a little way up the wall), 1 hob, 2 ovens, 2 sinks, 2 taps, 2 draining board arrangements, 1 dishwasher. I'm keeping my current fridge/freezer and washing machine. Ylf has provided a floor plan, a final quotation, and some computer-generated pictures of how it might look.

Meanwhile I have approved Ulf's chosen LVT (Luxury Vinyl Tile) supplier and he has partly broken down his quotation for me. We will have to talk more because (a) his quote for the flooring was supposed to be cheaper than the alternative Karndean but it isn't, (b) Ylf not Ulf needs to be responsible for the whole kitchen installation because Ulf doesn't have a fitter for my preferred worktop, and (c) I still don't have an overall comprehensive picture of what Ulf will be doing and how much it will cost. However, at this stage I can probably construct this for him, which is what I may do to save time.

As you can imagine, every other aspect of the LTRP is on hold until the kitchen project is done, except for trying to sell various unwanted white goods and the terracotta wine rack with capacity for thirty bottles that has never held more than about five. I'm not even thinking about what could be done next, although when the stairs are replaced (part of Ulf's quote) perhaps it will be time to consider the upstairs hall... so maybe I am thinking about what could be done next.

Badminton

Always evolving, my Monday club now only has three female members. I'm there for the full two hours every week without fail, and another lady regularly comes but for only one hour because she has childcare issues. The third lady turns up once in a while and swears that this time she will keep coming every week, then we don't see her again for months. So I spend a lot of time playing with the boys, which is fine, but it would be nice to have more women.

I tried to arrange a summer barbeque for the club. When will I learn? They all encourage me by saying what a good idea it is and won't it be fun, so I set a date and time and place and construct a welcoming and enthusiastic email, and just three people respond to say they can come, one of whom is bringing a child. So we abandon the BBQ and I book an Indian restaurant which turns out to be unsuitable for the mother/child combo and has to be un-booked, and we go to Pizza Express. At the last minute we did get three more, so there were eight of us in the end. It lashed down with rain throughout, so a good thing we didn't stick with the BBQ idea. And I so rarely get to eat pizza.

Garden

Nasty, thorny, back-breaking, stupid garden. I don't even spend much time sitting in it, not even back when the weather was good. Day 1: I hacked it back by at least a third and left all the debris on the lawn and paving. Day 2: I filled ten bags with non-thorny stuff (wisteria, forsythia, sage, spotted leaf plant whose name escapes me, other one with the scented white flowers), left the rest where it was. Day 3: took ten bags to the tip, returned and filled them again with the remaining thorny stuff (rose, berberis, pyracantha, holly, hawthorn) and more non-thorny stuff, took another ten bags to the tip. Another couple of bags still waiting, and the lawn needs mowing.

When the indoor LTRP is done I'm coming for you, garden. You'd better watch out.

During Day 3 a head popped up over the wall from my neighbour's garden. It is a gardener, who reports that he visits twice a year to hack back my neighbour's plants in much the same way as I hack back my own, except she has a much smaller space with much less in the way of thorns. I invited him to come and attack her overhanging shrubs from my side of the wall, which he did, and I now have his contact details. If this flirtation proceeds to full engagement then he may join the ranks of my named tradesmen, and I may never again have forearms that look as though I have been fighting with cats.

Buddhism

My Thursday badminton club doesn't play over the summer, and the Buddhist Centre in Birmingham has a Thursday night event. So at the beginning of the summer I thought I'd go there on Thursdays, except that I kept finding lots of good reasons not to. My local Tuesday Buddhist group doesn't happen in August either, but eventually I made it to Birmingham last Thursday. Conveniently, they were holding a Bake Off activity so there was a lot of cake, followed by a talk about how baking might complement Buddhist practice which didn't do much for me. But I enjoyed the cake a lot, and met some more new people who were also very pleasant and welcoming. I might even go again on another Thursday.

Work

There is a Health and Well-Being event scheduled for mid-September and aimed at staff at my hospital site, and the Dietitian who used to work in Public Health and 'cardiac prevention' has moved on to Weight Management. So I've been called upon to create the Healthy Eating stand, together with the two part-time ward Dietitians. (Almost immediately, and for reasons that are not connected with the Health and Well-Being event, one of them resigned.) I have made a few phone calls to a couple of organisations and with luck I'll receive a poster or two and some leaflets about fat, fibre, salt etc. in time for the event. It will not be an impressive display, and hopefully someone more competent will be appointed soon so I won't have to do it again.

I've also agreed to do an ante-natal clinic which is my least favourite clinic in the world, and I'm covering another clinic to help out the team because our Team Leader has gone, and I nearly covered another two clinics because of staff unavailability but I wasn't needed in the end. Look at me, volunteering for extra stuff. Maybe I am starting to work a bit harder than before. And my very least favourite patient of all time has decided that I can help him if he sees me on a regular basis, which is sufficient punishment for all my previous sins.

More progress

Tusmore Estate, April 2017

Nothing special to report for the last few weeks, although I've been having a good time. We had a family gathering on mum+dad's 60th wedding anniversary, which in true family style was celebrated by nothing special at all other than all of us being there. I have done a few of the jobs on my list that have been waiting for quite a long time, including meeting the new landlord of the Pub Next Door, buying house insurance, and putting up the last curtain in the new office/spare bedroom space which can be drawn across to separate the two 'rooms'.

The upstairs space is now structurally finished, but furniture needs to be brought upstairs which will need the help of some burly individuals who can help me move a filing cabinet, desks (one from downstairs to upstairs and the other in the opposite direction) and a bookcase. That will, I think, complete the office move, except for deciding what to do about the noticeboard.

More on the LTRP front - I now have working drawings to give the kitchen suppliers and builders, and I have sought alternative quotes. The alternative builder has so far not responded at all, and the alternative kitchen supplier was very scathing about my washing up preferences! She did however come up with the useful suggestion that my next step might be to settle on the appearance of the floor. I am going to have a vinyl option called Karndean, and I drove to the main Karndean showroom in Evesham, which was well worth the trip. I came away with three different samples large enough to make a choice at home, and the confidence that any one of them would do nicely.

Oh yes, I have been to see H+B in the North West along with Lola II, Mr M and Sister D, and we all made ourselves thoroughly at home over lunch. We were hoping to do a bit of walking in the afternoon, but the weather put a stop to that. I took the opportunity of visiting our Postal Mechanisation guru on the way home, since he also lives in the North West. He was very kind and welcoming even though it was Good Friday, which is just as well because we spent nearly five hours (FIVE HOURS) going through another three boxes of material that mum had unearthed. I got home at 2 a.m.

However, I had to agree with Lola II, Mr M and Sister D that I was spending too much time on this stupid ebay project. Although I find it mildly enjoyable, the time spent for meagre financial return is simply not worth it, and I have plenty of other more enjoyable occupations that I have no time for. So the plan was that I would go through the new stuff with the PM guru but would ask him to dispose of anything of value, and throw away everything else. This is what I did, so now I am only going to finish auctioning the material I already had. There is one box remaining, so it will still take a month or two.

I spent a day at the Birmingham Buddhist Centre doing meditation, listening to lectures, talking to all sorts of people and then watching a kind of ritual that is the closest buddhists seem to get to formal 'worship'. The thought most prominent in my mind was 'I can't imagine ever joining in with that', but who knows? They are a thoughtful and sincere group of people and I have a lot more in common with them than with any of my work colleagues and many of my friends.

Over the Easter break, as well as the northern excursion I did another ten mile walk with the Meetup group I joined for the New Year walk. The walk leader this time set a rather fast pace, and by the end my legs were aching and I'd also managed to acquire an impressive blister on my little toe. If I sign up for another long walk I'll have to watch out for who's leading, but in fact I'll probably stick to the five mile options in future. The picture at the head of the blog was taken on the route, but the estate is privately owned so we didn't go in and I don't exactly know what the buildings are.

Lastly, badminton news: Club #2 held an end-of-season tournament (they don't play over the summer) and I won the top lady prize. While you may think this indicates my advanced badminton skillz, you should consider the alternative explanation, which is that I have chosen to play in a club containing players who are significantly older and significantly less fit than I am. But I was runner up for the past two years, so it's still rather nice to win something.

North Oxfordshire, April 2017

An awful lot to do

Krakow Botanical Gardens, July 2016

It's a familiar complaint, and we hear it all the time from friends, family and colleagues. Not enough time, they say, not enough hours in the day. I silently think very uncharitable thoughts, usually along the lines of "well if you watched less television..." which I have no doubt are utterly unfair. Because although I often comment on how much I have to do, this week I have experienced the perfect storm. Of course it is of my own making so I am not encouraging expressions of sympathy; I just need to get a grip.

Badminton - my regular two nights a week is augmented to three this week with a match on Friday.

eBay - this is the one that is hoovering up all the hours in the day, even though I am now only putting things up for auction three days a week. It's taking all the pictures, weighing things for postage pricing and concocting the item description that take so much time, and I would chuck it all in but people continue to buy this junk. It's strangely enjoyable when a bid appears.

Routine commitments - dentist, car service, a meeting with the finance man, blood donation, laundry, ironing, meditation, food shopping, cooking, eating, washing up.

LTRP - looking good and progressing well, but requires me to do research and think about what I want and make decisions. What is looming over me at the moment is that I have an invoice to pay and I just want to check it against the original estimate, and I know where all the documents are but just haven't got round to it. A Round Tuit is what I need to get. I haven't even started thinking about the curtain that I need.

Tent - this has been a major preoccupation because some camping is definitely going to take place in July and September and for goodness sake it's time I had my own tent. My original research uncovered two tents at vastly different prices, and it took a while to decide I would have the more expensive one, at which point I found that I'd been looking at a very out of date website. I found another supplier but they told me the tent I wanted was last year's model and no longer available, but pointed me in the direction of a different one. Meanwhile I found the original tent on ebay and dithered for some time about putting my faith in an unknown ebay supplier. I decided not to and I think I know which one I will buy, just as soon as I can phone the supplier to check that there is not some fatal flaw with this choice as well.

Media - being away for a week skiing meant a total break from podcasts and radio programmes, although I managed a bit of book reading. Coming back I wasn't prepared to skip any of my regular listens, and it has taken me a month to catch up; a month in which I have read nothing in print except a copy of 'Dietetics Today'. I've just managed to start a new audio book, but it's the strange American narrator reading Pride and Prejudice. An hour in, and actually he's not doing a bad job.

Whisky Tasting With Food - I haven't got time for a full account of this wondrous event. Mr M and Lola II brought a selection from Mr M's range of whiskies on tour to Leamington, and three new candidates experienced the joy. I'm lucky enough to have attended two before this one, and from a standing start at my first event when I took the position of not really liking whisky, I have come to love it. Lola II and Mr M have hosted more than ten of these events, and Lola II said this one was the best so far.

Music group - these happen once a month. I went to the first one of the new year, which was in February, then missed one because of skiing. The next is coming up and I couldn't bear to go without having played a note in two months, so I'm trying to put in a bit of practice every day. The main problem with this is that one of the saxophone pieces is 'Copacabana' by Barry Manilow, and it has an extremely catchy bass line which has lodged in my brain and refuses to leave. Now I've planted it in your brain too (I'm talking to you, Lola II).

Alongside all of this stuff is the paid job, and I found out today that our Senior Diabetes Specialist Dietitian Team Leader is leaving, which is a great shame. I was aware that she was considering this move and she even asked me if I'd be interested in her role, but aside from the higher pay band there's nothing in the team leader position that is the least bit attractive. And I'd have to work harder and care more, and I'm very reluctant to do those things, and there's all this other stuff that is sucking up all my time...

I'm not sure what I will do about having too much to do and not enough time, because even if I gave up some of the optional things that I enjoy I doubt that I'd do more of the necessary things that I don't enjoy. So I suppose I've let off a bit of steam here, and everything will continue as before.

More from Krakow, July 2016

The year gone by

Courtyard in Krakow, July 2016

It's been a good year on the whole, marked for me by my dedication to the Lola Towers Renovation Project. In the past year I have acquired a working garage, lights, door handles, front door lock, the loft cleared (almost), the garden tidied and the bathroom decorated. Planning the kitchen is well under way, and I've even been able to imagine some more decorating taking place alongside the kitchen enterprise. I've also been toying with some ideas about how the different rooms might change their identities when the decorating is done.

Work has been satisfying with new members of staff and plans for new enterprises, although the proposed expansion of the service beyond two new nurses has not been supported by any funding and therefore has not happened. There ought to be a Dietitian involved in the Transition and the Young People's clinics, and we are hoping to extend the insulin pump service to offer appointments at the other hospital, but I won't be doing it until it is agreed that I will be paid for more hours. I enjoy all the clinics I do, the doctors are good to work with, and I particularly enjoy delivering the patient education. So no problems at work at the moment.

In this quiet time between Christmas and New Year (I heard it called Chrimbo Limbo this morning on the radio) I've been working on a Carb Counting Short Course. At this stage I'm considering who to invite and how to evaluate the effectiveness of the course. Our main carb counting course takes four days over three weeks and is only offered to people with Type 1 Diabetes who have been diagnosed for at least a year and are on a particular insulin regime, so there are many people who aren't eligible or can't spare the time but would benefit from a carb counting update. The short course is only two sessions of two hours each, and we will invite people who are newly diagnosed, people with Type 2, busy people who can't take all that time off work, and people on different insulin regimes.

Outside work my badminton obsession continues unabated, accompanied by a little bit of running but only when there's no badminton (like the last two weeks). Obviously I enjoy writing for this blog, and I have read 47 books this year according to my profile on Goodreads, which also tells me this:
Shortest book: Utz (154 pages)
Longest book: The Magus (656 pages) but I actually listened to this one so there were no pages at all
Most popular book: Dune (read by 705,533 other Goodreads readers this year)

Holidays - some really good ones this year - skiing in Bulgaria and France, sightseeing in Krakow and Spain, and lovely weekends in London, Leicester and Bristol. The Buddhist meditation group has become another regular extra-curricular pastime, which I continue to attend and enjoy while not really doing any meditation at all at home - I haven't yet worked out how to fit it into my lifestyle.

This time last year I thought 2015 had been a bit rubbish, and so it had within my little world. 2016 has been infinitely more rubbish when you consider global events like Brexit and Trump, but personally I have had a much better year with lots to look forward to in 2017 too. You never know, this time next year I may have a new kitchen!

Spain, November 2016