A Revelation while camping

Beech Estate campsite, July 2020

So I gave you all the news from work last time, now here's the rest of it.

I went to the dentist, routine appointment, but nothing is routine at the moment. The door's closed, ring the bell, my temperature is checked before I come in, I have to wear a face covering and so does everyone there, all possessions put in a plastic tub, no magazines or water in the waiting room, perspex screen in front of reception. Once I'm in the chair and the hygienist and assistant are fully covered up I can take my face covering off. My usual hygienist has had a baby so I've got one who's never met me before, and I get the usual furrowed brows at the state of my gums with some new proposal about how things might be improved - non-surgical suggestions this time. Many things have been tried and failed to help, but it's nice of them to keep coming up with new ideas.

On Saturday morning there was a very exciting incident at home, when I heard crashing and thumping noises in the house, suggestive of an intruder. With hindsight I didn't treat this with the degree of wariness that perhaps I should, but luckily for me it turned out to be a burly woodpigeon in the living room which must have entered via the chimney as all the doors and windows were shut. Again, luckily for me, the chimney hadn't been used much since it was last swept so there wasn't much soot, and the crash was due to an ornamental pot knocked off the windowsill onto the floor. I opened the French doors and burly pigeon exited without any fuss, and hadn't left all that much mess behind it, and I set up the shards of the shattered pot in an artistic manner and reflected on the impermanence of all things.

Last thing before going on holiday was that as I was driving away, I noticed that the pub door was open and there seemed to be some work going on. The workmen were not all that forthcoming about who was ultimately in charge, but it's encouraging to know that the building won't become derelict. It's a very attractive location and I'm sure someone will see the potential, so I just hope it will be a sympathetic operator.

There! We've made it as far as the holiday, which was camping in Sussex near Battle, with Lola II and Mr M, via mum and dad, who are well (all things considered). It was a woodland campsite, some of the indoor facilities were closed but there were flush toilets as well as compost toilets, outdoor bucket showers if you were interested, and lots of hand sanitiser and disinfectant sprays. Lola II and Mr M like a nice fire so they cooked on that while I stuck to the less exciting camping stove for what I consider to be more appetising results. And I saw my first glow worm! I had no idea we had glow worms in this country.

The next day was a bit wet and windy but we went to see what Battle was like, and ended up inside the Abbey, wandering about and listening to a talk all about the years leading up to the famous Battle of Hastings. Then, for the first time in many months, we went INSIDE a cafe and had lunch. There was hand sanitiser, contact details had to be given, there were screens, and there was also... cheese. I haven't bought proper cheese since starting the diet because it simply has too many calories to be worth it, but this was a holiday and the portion wasn't too big and it was truly delicious. We went inside a cafe on the next day too, and I had more cheese.

We also went to Great Dixter gardens, which was beautiful and will provide flower portraits for the blog for a few months. But the significant event of the camping trip was when I went for a walk with Mr M, and he asked about work, and I said that on the whole it wasn't brilliant, and in that moment I had a Revelation: I decided that I didn't have to keep doing the same job, and I could probably find something else for two days a week that would use more of my brain and require me to spend no more time with my current colleagues.

My plan was to ask all my friends in different walks of life whether they were aware of any jobs at all, and follow leads, and generally take a few months to see if anything useful came up. It wasn't going to be much fun but if I could cobble together something that worked it would be worth it, and I felt vaguely optimistic as I headed off for the next bit of holiday, which was to stay with friends in Surrey: Mr MXF and Bee Lady 2 (BL2), for now I have another friend with a hive. And the name sounds better than Chicken Lady or Mrs MXF.

Mr MXF and BL2 and their two grown-up children are always full of schemes and activities: running, swimming, cycling, tending their small woodland, ecology and sustainability, village activities such as the huge November 5th village bonfire, keeping chickens and now bees, and hosting the 'Run Forest Run' annual running and obstacle course event. My friendship with Mr MXF goes back to university days; BL2 was my companion in 2016 when we went skiing in Bulgaria.

Their acquisition of a small patch of woodland has brought about much wood-related activity and consequent machinery. As a result of a too-tall eucalypt in their garden being taken out during the week there was a vast amount of wood to be cleared, but many neighbours willing to wield an axe and take a barrow-full. A three-meter length of trunk with a diameter of about a meter lay in the garden, and the plan was to use an enormous chainsaw in a rig to cut slabs of it which would be dried and seasoned and eventually turned into table tops. I mostly watched and photographed, but also had a go on the rig for one cut, just because I'll try anything once.

But as I arrived I was still full of the Revelation, and as I described to Mr MXF my idea about finding something else to do for two days a week, his eyes kind of opened wide, and lit up, and he said "You could work for me!" So that's what we're going to explore, and it might not work - my brain might not be right for the sort of work he is thinking of - but it might work and that is really very exciting. But it has made it much more difficult for me to face my current two days at the Diabetes Centre, imagining how I might not have to do it for much longer.

The C-word

Val Thorens, March 2020

My second ski trip was as successful as the first, after a rocky time leading up to the holiday when two people had to drop out - one woman because her husband had a stroke, and another man because he had damaged his knee. Luckily we managed to find two replacements.

We went to the same ski area as for my first holiday this year so I was slightly familiar with the runs and could make my own way round on the last day. The winter had been warm and spring had definitely arrived, so there was some rain and much melting of snow (also some fresh falls), but enough at high level to keep us swishing with satisfaction down the slopes.

We were a large group - 14 lovely people with varying experience and competence. Most of the time we split up into groups of similar speed and skill. One day was pretty cloudy but visibility was variable and I went out; the next day visibility was nil and it snowed a lot so I didn't ski. I had a wander around the town, some people went bowling, others sat in bars or had coffees, some stayed at the chalet and played cards. On other days we skied in bright, hot sunshine, which made conditions a bit slushy at low altitudes and at the end of the day.

With this many people in the group it helps to have a volunteer who makes decisions about the route and navigates as we go along. The main leader was the chap who had the thankless task of booking the whole holiday (and dealing with the consequences of those two people dropping out), but one of the others took over one day for an area that he was familiar with, and I even led for half a day to make sure we went to an area I wanted to ski. My period of leading didn't go as planned because one of the key pistes I was hoping to ski was closed and required a significant wait for a cable car and a major detour.

On the last day we had one of those situations when nobody particularly wanted to be in charge. There was also thick cloud in the valleys, so we started off at high level with all 14 of us together, stopping frequently to make sure everyone had caught up and to have long discussions about where we should go next which mostly went: "I don't really mind," multiplied 14 times. At one crossroads a decision was eventually made to go one way, and I decided to split off from the main group and go the other way because I couldn't bear the slowness and indecision, and also because there were a few runs I really wanted to ski.

I know when I'm skiing on my own that I need to make the time for breaks, so I did have a morning stop for hot chocolate and a lunchtime stop for my cheese roll. But I couldn't overcome my tendency to go for just one more run, and my legs were tired, and the unpisted run was lumpy even though not steep, and I fell over onto my shoulder just as I did a few years ago. Not serious, and it will sort itself out eventually, but last time it took about nine months and in the meantime my left arm is a bit restricted in its upward movement..

While we were out there in France we were all following various aspects of reporting on the Coronavirus pandemic. One chap had a friend who arrived in an Italian ski resort just as they closed the whole country down - his party was flown back to the UK the next day. Our chalet hosts (young men aged 19 and 22) were theorising on what might happen next week - there were 13 people due to arrive on the day we left. There were no particular restrictions in place and restaurants and bars were open as normal. We congratulated ourselves on a successful holiday as we arrived back in the UK on Saturday, and then on Sunday the news came that all French ski resorts would be closed with immediate effect.

The group after us would already have arrived at the chalet, including one guest who had booked only the previous day, to be faced with no skiing at all. We were all OK though. I had already started on my list of jobs - laundry, cooking, arranging the team for badminton matches this week - when news came through that one of our party had woken on Sunday with a high temperature.

So throughout Sunday messages were flying round - about his condition, about our different employers and their policies, about the guidance from Public Health England and the NHS 111 phone line. Those who could were going to stay at home rather than go into work, but my work can't be done from home and all the guidance said that you only self-isolate if you or those you live with have symptoms, not if people you happen to have been on holiday with have symptoms.

Since then things have moved fast, to the point that the situation is quite different while I type the end of this post compared with when I started. On the plus side, his temperature returned to normal after 24 hours. On the minus side, the panic buying, social distancing, daily updates from the hospital management, local, regional and national policies that change from day to day, the closure of my regular groups (badminton, Buddhism and music) and the cancellation of all of my spring and summer holiday plans. My diary has gone from a joyful mess of evening engagements, weekend breaks and longer holidays to a blank page with 13½ hours a week at work and the rest at home, save for the occasional shop for fresh and perishable foods.

I'm sure I will find more to write about the C-word soon. But I'm fine and so are my friends and family as far as I am aware, and we are all doing the best we can in the circumstances.

Fairyvocals

Rio de Janeiro Botanical Gardens, April 2019

I realise I haven't mentioned my new spectacles. It has become increasingly difficult using the computer screen at work with my varifocals - or 'fairyvocals' as they were amusingly called recently.

The particular distance of the screen corresponds to a fairly narrow band within the specs so I was having to hold my head at a particular angle to see the screen which then made it difficult to refocus on paperwork on the desk. A classic case for supporting an application to my employer for special specs for VDU use, and I mentioned this at last year's routine optician appointment. They agreed, and measured me up for a pair of old fashioned bifocals with the cheapest possible lenses and frames given that I wasn't sure how much my employer might stump up. It came to £125 which is a real bargain compared with my usual specs which cost about £200 per lens plus the cost of the frame.

It took a long time to go through the process of self-assessment at work, then an Occupational Health interview to verify my assessment, then identifying how much might be contributed and who by and how the payment would be achieved. Meanwhile, despite my instructions to the optician not to get the glasses made until I'd found out more about how they could be paid for, I got a message to say that my spectacles were ready for collection. So they stayed that way for quite a while.

Eventually the Powers That Be at work agreed to stump up £60 and I collected the specs. You get what you pay for - they are the old-fashioned bifocals, which I was aware of; what I hadn't remembered was that they are also the old-fashioned low refractive index glass, which makes the left lens 12mm thick at its widest point, and they weigh a ton. Good thing I'm only wearing them for the computer. At least they do work brilliantly for that purpose.

Out of control

Rio de Janeiro Botanical Gardens, April 2019

Everything is briefly but totally out of control. My email Inbox, which I try to keep below about 40 items maximum, is at 73 and counting. I haven't sat at my desk for nearly a week, and when I have it's been to try and set up the new laptop with everything I need in the configuration that I need it. And now that I have most of a day to address the situation I have developed toothache that has kept me awake most of the night, and, separately, a possible lost filling (it's hard to tell, it's at the back and I can't see it very well, or even know what I'm looking for).

Those are my current home-based woes, then. In addition, at work I rashly volunteered to deliver a development session to the department of my fellow Dietitians all about technologies for Type 1 diabetes, and because I was going to base it on the talk I gave recently to the students I didn't think it would take that long to write. And it hasn't taken that long, but what I didn't consider is that my reduction in hours has left me with almost no time outside clinics, and three weeks time is actually only a few hours of available working hours. So I've had to do a bit of that at home too.

[The payment for the session I delivered in November has still not come through, although at last I have completed the relevant forms, and not been required to attend for an interview to determine whether I am legally able to work in the UK. Then they queried the forms because I hadn't completed the 'emergency contact' section for a session that has already been delivered. I should be paid by the end of this month.]

And now I've started writing this blog I realise that it is actually much more important to address the accumulation in my Inbox - I've already phoned the dentist for an emergency appointment, and the new laptop is doing all the email and browsing nicely. Transferring the pictures has been problematic and I haven't started on any of the other files or programmes yet, although I have dipped a toe in Microsoft's free cloud-based Office Suite and OpenDrive in order to try and do the presentation for work. It all takes so much time.

I should have a bit more free time on Saturday when I'm not at the dentist or cleaning the toilet or making vegan brownies because some Buddhists are coming over for a team meeting. I still haven't finished the presentation for the Dietitians and I'm supposed to be delivering it on Tuesday, and Sunday is reserved for another Buddhist event where the brownies will be finished. There's been lots of Buddhism this week - on Monday evening I went to the first meeting of my Study Group, which is displacing my Monday badminton for the next three months.

And it's now Saturday and the dentist has given me some antibiotics and booked me in for the filling in a month and the toilet is cleaned and the Buddhists loved the brownies and I'm about to get stuck in and finish the presentation for the Dietitians and deal with some more of the email and then a bit of ironing and housework. But first, I'll just publish this.

So, a little bit out of control. But in a very good way.

Local news

La Plagne, March 2019

• The living room, stairs and upstairs hall walls have been stripped of their paper, and a little of their plaster too, especially the ceiling. The signs of a previous door out to the garden from the living room have been revealed, which is only very slightly interesting.
• Ulf has come to quote for the plaster skimming, and also to have a look at a couple of other issues with the kitchen build - a crack has appeared in the old brickwork adjacent to the new build, and there is a strange patch of what looks like moisture but isn't on an external wall or at ground level. A week later - not heard back from him yet.
• With the wall all stripped down, I realised that it would be the perfect opportunity to adjust the lights, switches and sockets in the room, so I got back in touch with Bill the electrician. No response for a week, then I followed up by phone, and still nothing definite.
• Olf lost the measurements he made a few weeks ago so had to come back again so he can quote for some outside work. A week later - still no quote.
• I have been inoculated or boosted against diphtheria, tetanus, polio, hepatitis A, typhoid and yellow fever. Not all at once. The yellow fever one was nasty - my arm still hurts nearly a week later and it cost £60, but I do get a nice certificate.
• The bandstand in the pump room gardens is back, after a considerable time (more than a year) being renovated. It's been repainted in strange pastel colours.
• My favourite shop in Leamington, Clarke's greengrocer, has now closed for good. There has been a longstanding pattern of my very favourite shops in town being closed - if this continues then Wofon will be next, or Kayal (but I go to Wofon much more than Kayal).
• I registered a complaint with Santander bank, which contacted me about a potentially fraudulent transaction but didn't make it clear that it wasn't on my account but one for which I have power of attorney. This caused no end of hassle both to me and to the account holder with frozen accounts, declined payments, a bounced cheque and a very extended visit to a branch. The final outcome is positive with compensation for both of us. They said they would take notice of my suggestions for how the system could be improved - all they would have to do would be make clear that I had been contacted as the attorney rather than the main account holder. Seems simple, but everything I have ever heard about how banks manage powers of attorney suggests that nothing will change. At least I won't make that mistake again.
• The molar that had been becoming increasingly troublesome forced me to the dentist in the face of the upcoming trip where dental issues would be highly inconvenient. After examination and X-ray the dentist came back wearing 'very sad face' (he's normally very jolly), to tell me that it was time for extraction. I told him to cheer up because at this point I couldn't be rid of it soon enough. He did a great job; it didn't hurt at the time or since, I completed my 3 days of regular salt water mouthwash (much worse than the extraction) and waited for it to heal a bit more so I could get stuck into all the chewy food I had given up on. I should have stocked up on trifle, but eggs, well-cooked pasta and soup sustained me very well. I ate a lovely crunchy apple yesterday!
• Films watched recently:
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - a poor title for a great movie with Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock and a very talented young actor, Thomas Horn.
• Whitney - after I'd watched this recent documentary I found a slightly older documentary on BBC iPlayer (Can I Be Me?) so I watched that as well. Tragic story of the rise and fall of such a talented woman.
• Three Identical Strangers - a fascinating documentary from Channel 4, some of it predictable I suppose, but each revelation on top of the previous one increased my outrage.
• Miss Sloane - a film recommended by Landrover Man, and it was very good. So complicated that I'd probably have to watch it again to make sure I picked up on all the twists, but I find that the sign of a good film.
• My printer is Not Very Well. It remains to be seen whether its condition is terminal, but I don't have the strength to tackle it just at the moment, and I'll have to use the work printer for critical things if necessary. However, Buddhists, badminton players, work colleagues, friends and family are all Alive as far as I'm aware.

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

Health and Wellbeing and a camping holiday

Worthing pier, September 2017

What with being away on holiday for a few days, and Thursday badminton starting up again, and also just not wanting to sit at the computer when I'm at home, I've got a bit behind with my online life. I've only watched the first episode of the Great British Bake Off, and it's the only TV programme I watch all year. LTRP update - no, just joking, nothing's happened.

There was the Leamington Food & Drink Festival, which was delightful as usual and attended by Lola II and Mr M as well as cousin Y and one of Mr M's friends from Nottingham and another of Mr M's friends from Wolverhampton. We started early on the Saturday and this turned out to be a good idea because at about noon the rain came down in torrents. It cleared up for brief periods thereafter so the event wasn't a total washout.

At work, I created a Dietetics stand for the Trust's Health and Wellbeing event for staff. It was in the dining room of the hospital along with other stands: Stop Smoking, Join UNISON, Physiotherapy, the Chaplain, the local Sports Centre, Neyber (something to do with cheap loans), and the Occupational Health team offering blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol tests. On my stand were free leaflets from CASH (Consensus Action on Salt and Health), BHF (British Heart Foundation) and the World Cancer Research Fund, and I wheeled my scales over and brought a tape measure and stadiometer for measuring height.

The only stand that really attracted any traffic was the Occy Health one, which had queues lined up most of the time. Neyber and UNISON had free pens, and the physio offered to time you sitting and standing as many times as you could in a minute, but most people were really only interested in their blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol. Including me. My cholesterol level was even higher than it was when I went for my over 50's Health Check.at my GP.

The Occy Health team sent a few people over to me to have their weight and height measured, including one teeny tiny Asian lady whom I dutifully measured even though it was obvious that she wasn't even close to being overweight, but who seemed relieved to be told this fact. They also sent over someone with high blood glucose to have a chat, but she'd been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes some time ago, didn't really seem at all bothered and wasn't particularly interested in doing anything about it.

I spoke to no more than about ten people in the four hours I was there, not counting people on the other stands who were similarly idle - I don't think the Chaplain had any customers at all. But it was a nice change of scenery, and despite not having much to do it was a great deal more interesting than the day at the ante-natal clinic.

Shipley Church, September 2017

The main event recently was an epic camping trip with Lola II to a beautiful campsite in West Sussex. It was one of the best campsites I've ever been to, mainly because of the facilities. These include covered areas for sitting, eating and washing up (and for cooking if you'd hired one of their tents), delightful composting toilets, open air showers and baths (we didn't try these) but also properly plumbed indoor toilets and showers and a wood stove and sofas in a communal area which was very welcome when the cold and rain arrived one evening.

We were the only campers on Thursday night, although there were a few inhabitants of the fixed cabins and tents. When a single chap arrived on Friday we went over to offer help him put up his tent, and found out that it was his wedding anniversary and he was going to surprise his wife with a couple of nights away from their three-year-old. When we were sitting on the sofa in front of the wood stove we got chatting to another couple of campers who were a nurse and a carpenter, and then another couple wandered in and they had just got engaged. They had put up two tents, and it seems that there are still people in the world who do not share a tent until they are married.

Knepp Wildlife, September 2017

This was a great deal more interaction than is usual at a campsite, and enhanced the experience no end. But it wasn't all chat - we went for a long walk and saw a herd of deer, we ate a really good meal at the local pub, had a couple of similarly good meals in the tent, and went to Worthing Food Festival which is about a quarter of the size of Leamington's. But there were some good pastries and pies and we made the most of the opportunity. They also had some activities, and while we were there an American guy was overseeing children constructing structures out of wine gums and cocktail sticks, which were then tested to see how many bags of sugar they could support. His commentary was highly amusing, including a section where he forced his audience to pronounce various words as Americans do: To-MAY-to! YOH-gurt! Say it! YOH-gurt!

Lola II was due to blow the ram's horn ('shofar') at mum's synagogue where she has a regular annual booking, and following a bit of a disaster one year when she didn't practise in advance, she had brought the shofar with her. Back in the tent I took a photo of her in mis-matched pyjamas with a tea towel for a prayer shawl and a sock on her head and put it on Facebook for a laugh, expecting it to attract no attention whatever, as is usual for my posts. Over the next few days I had more Facebook 'Likes' for this appalling spectacle than for anything I've posted before. Lola's horror was most entertaining (for me) as she writhed in embarrassment at each new visitor.

On the way home we stopped at Watts Gallery and Artists' Village in Surrey, where George Frederic Watts and his wife Mary set up home and did their art - painting and sculpture (him) and pottery (her). I'm not great with art galleries, but I really liked this one. We also went up the road to the chapel that they built and saw his grave as well as that of the Huxley family - one of the gallery staff told us that the actor Patricia Hayes was also buried there.

The weather was very variable - clear skies full of stars the first night, pouring rain, hot sunshine, just what you'd expect of September in England. That was the last camping trip of the year, I think.

Watts Gallery, September 2017

Bad luck, carelessness and stupidity

Lansdowne Crescent, June 2017

I have grown some lovely new skin over the back of my hand, which is now almost as good as new, just a bit pink to show where the damage was done. Then, like a child who doesn't know any better, I went for a long walk in some boots that didn't fit very well and managed to create more blister than toe on one foot. This is also much better now, but I need to pay more attention to looking after my extremities. And get rid of the boots. And try not to pour hot water over myself.

In other health news I have been a regular visitor to the dentist, because the appliance that used to stop me from grinding my teeth at night no longer works, seemingly because either my teeth or my jaw has exerted its independent right to travel. A new appliance is in order, but the first impression wasn't good enough and then there was some mixup at the lab so I've made three visits to the dentist so far. He's a pleasant man who knows the couple who used to live at Lola Towers before me, and we had a nostalgic conversation about the 70's children's TV programme 'Fingerbobs' while the dental assistant rolled her eyes at us.

The LTRP never quite goes away, and I had a long meeting with the builder to talk about exactly how the kitchen work will be done in what order by whom. It raised a few more questions, but I am fairly confident. No alternative builder has come back to me and the airing cupboard carpenter is not responding to my messages inviting him to quote for the stairs. I asked the builder to extend the work to deal with some damp in a wall, re-lay the paving in the garden and replace the veranda structure, and he has quoted quite reasonably for the damp and given me two incredibly high figures for the other two jobs. So more work for me to do in that direction.

Now I need to turn my attention back to the detail of kitchen fittings and will be seeing my chosen kitchen supplier next week. I did follow through and get an alternative quote, but it was much higher with poor attention to detail, she tended to blame me for not telling her things that were on the plans, and she talked too loudly. This last factor wouldn't have been the deciding one but it was definitely in the mix.

My appliance research has also presented me with interesting decisions to be made - double oven, two single ovens, integrated or separate microwave? It has also spurred me on to divest myself of superfluous white goods - anyone want an under-counter freezer, a dishwasher (which is now working, hooray!) and an integrated fridge? Nobody seems to be interested in the 30-bottle terracotta wine rack, so next I will split it into six 5-bottle units and see if they will attract more interest. There's also a pendant light and a wall light, a roll of wallpaper, all the kitchen cupboard doors and eventually the gas hob, which may need to be given away or donated to a good cause if I can find one that will take them.

Enough of the LTRP. There's also work news. Our newest nurse is in a fairly senior role, and is bringing her influence to bear by trying to introduce new ways of working and ideas that she's used before. I am really trying hard to be open-minded, but most of what she has suggested so far seems to bring little benefit to staff or patients. The latest thing is that she has covered the walls of the building with home-made motivational posters, which I always find irritating. I have had to secretly remove the one that offered the message "Every human being is the author of his own health or disease," supposedly quoted by the Buddha. At least the one about having a mind like a parachute that only works when it's open isn't actually offensive to people who have been diagnosed with a lifelong condition whose cause is unknown.

She has also arranged to have an enormous poster about risk factors in diabetes printed, with a grid containing pictures at the heading of columns and rows, and 'thumbs up' symbols within the squares of the grid. It really is enormous - about four feet high. The lack of actual words is to cater for non-English readers, but I looked at the poster for some time trying to decipher its meaning. Eventually I had to ask her what a couple of the pictures meant - the brain at the top is to represent a stroke, and the sad face on the left is depression - at which point I asked why depression is good for the heart? I don't think she's going to fix it, but then I don't think any patients are really going to look at the poster, and if they did I doubt that it would give them any information that they might go on to use.

We have been told that a rheumatology service is going to move into our building, displacing our gastroenterology doctor and his secretary. I have no idea why either gastroenterology or rheumatology should be located in a Diabetes centre, but there is no arguing with the Management. It's bad enough having a renal clinic on a Wednesday morning - renal patients seem to be much more tetchy than people with diabetes, perhaps because kidney disease makes you feel more ill.

Latest news - someone tried to further knock down the already knockdown price of the freezer, but I stood my ground and he paid up and took it away yesterday. Progress!

Speedy, healthy and fishy

There's been too much going on for me to spend much time enjoying my new expanded electrically-lit living space, but I have dipped into the upstairs room most days to turn the lights on and off just for the enjoyment of it. As Lola II pointed out, the downstairs door that was initially so exciting to open and close must be fairly envious now it's getting no particular attention (although I do still experience a slight thrill when I use it). My delight with the upstairs light will no doubt pass into normality eventually, like the door, and the door handles, and the other lights, and the garage, and everything else. But at the moment simply turning a light on and off is a treat. Planning permission for the kitchen has now been granted, so the fact that I've been able to cope with a few other jobs at the same time makes me feel like a superhero.

In the last week at work I managed to implement a development regarding Christmas cards, whereby I let everyone in my local team know that instead of giving them cards I would make a donation to Diabetes UK. I invited them all to do the same, but only two joined me. It worked well for me, and I plan to extend it to include more colleagues next year.

Two weeks ago the evenings were full of mostly badminton - one club night, one match, one tournament and one Christmas meal, and - unusually - we won the match. The other weekday evening disappeared into the longest working day ever. I got caught up in a conversation with the doctors at the end of the day, which was interesting but not particularly important, and gave me no opportunity to extract myself gracefully within a reasonable time.

Our concert went well at the weekend given that I was sight-reading second clarinet because of a player dropping out at short notice with a broken wrist. Playing the tenor saxophone has been pretty good but I'm going back to the baritone sax next term, and looking forward to it. That weekend I also baked a gluten-free lemon drizzle cake and a dairy- and egg-free chocolate cake because Monday was the last club night before Christmas at the other badminton club, and there are players with dietary intolerances.

Tuesday started with a Speed Awareness course. In November I got caught by a mobile speed camera on the way to work doing 37mph in a 30mph zone. That was actually because I was going to work later than usual; at my regular commuting time the traffic is too clogged up to go that fast.

It was an interesting morning in a large group being reminded of speed limits for various types of road and types of vehicle, and spotting hazards in a short video and still photos. Rather than dry figures for stopping distances at various speeds they used the stopping distance at 30mph as the comparator, and told us what speed we would be doing at that point if we were driving at higher speeds, because most of the speed reduction is achieved in the last few seconds of braking. I found out that there are only 35 fixed camera sites in the whole of Warwickshire and not all of them are active at any one time, while there are 60 mobile locations but only three vans (and generally only two out on the roads at a time). I also know now about gateway signs and repeater signs, which are different ways of telling you what the speed limit is.

The key things are that by attending the course I have avoided getting three points on my licence, and I have to avoid getting caught again for three years because in that case prosecution (i.e. points) is unavoidable. Certainly at the moment I'm being much more attentive to speed limits, especially in the spot where I was caught.

That wasn't the only appointment on Tuesday. I followed up with the routine NHS Check that's offered when you're my age in order to estimate your risk of cardiovascular disease. They measure height, weight, BMI, activity, alcohol, smoking, blood pressure and take a blood sample for on-the-spot cholesterol. My results were as I would have expected - very good level of activity, great blood pressure, BMI not bad (borderline overweight, doh! I can't seem to shift this), very little alcohol, no significant family history. My total cholesterol is higher than is desirable but includes a high level of HDL (good cholesterol), so that the ratio of total cholesterol:HDL is well within the ideal range. Overall my risk of having a cardiovascular event (heart attack or stroke) over the next 10 years is 2.7%. The average for my age and sex is 2.6%. I am considering doing something about my cholesterol level. I could certainly cut back a bit on the saturated fat and I haven't been eating much oats, fish, soya or pulses recently - but making up for it over Christmas with fish at least.

There was more to come on Task-based Tuesday - kitchen shops. Now that I have planning permission and an agreed outline plan of the new kitchen, I thought it would be easy to get some help from people whose job it is to design kitchens. How wrong I was. The two shops I visited (one large chain, one small independent) absolutely refuse to do anything for me without detailed architectural plans that define every measurement of the new layout, including location of utilities such as gas and water. They agreed that it was a Catch-22 situation - in order to get help in designing my kitchen I need to give them a detailed design of my kitchen. I have investigated briefly, and there appear to be a number of online tools that may help me.

From Wednesday onwards there were no more appointments and commitments outside work, my evenings were free, and then four days off for Christmas. I planned menus and put in an order at the fishmonger. I actually went for a run on Thursday! and it wasn't bad at all. Work was very quiet as nobody really wants an appointment on the last working day before Christmas, and it gives me a chance to catch up on clearing out the pile of stuff that I've accumulated over the year. Some interesting items in there!

I followed up my Thursday run with Parkrun on Saturday, picked up my order of fishy treats from the fishmonger, then a few jobs in town and then Christmas arrived. The oysters were surprisingly enormous and almost defeated me - they definitely defeated my oyster knife. I was planning to eat half a dozen in each of two meals, but they were so huge that I went with just four at a time and it was plenty.

Now Christmas is almost over and I have to motivate myself into greater activity. I was going to prune the Wisteria but the online gurus seem to be saying February not December, so I'd better wait. I need to get rid of the compost bin and carry on tidying away the various items like flower pots, buckets, planters and such which have seemingly found a permanent home in the garden. There's always something to do, although sitting and reading or watching films has certainly been significant in this household over the last few days.

I did this, then I did that

Krakow Botanical Gardens, July 2016

This is getting more like a diary than a blog - a succession of things that seem to fill my life sufficiently so that I am rarely bored and mostly have too much on my plate. Literally and metaphorically. The weight loss plan is not going brilliantly, despite me having completely stopped buying bars of chocolate. Bother.

Topic 1: Health - physical and metaphysical

I have had an ultrasound of my shoulder which identified some inflammation and degenerative changes typical in a person of my age. This was followed by a consultation with a specialist physiotherapist who diagnosed slow onset frozen shoulder. He offered a steroid injection to address the pain temporarily, which I declined because the pain doesn't bother me that much. I just feel resentful that my body is finally rebelling and giving me some trouble, just to remind me that I'm not as young as I was. With time, the shoulder should get better, but I doubt that I'll get any less grumpy about being as old as I am. This is as good as it gets.

On the other hand, I have started looking forward to the meditation and Buddhism group. I started with a four-session introductory course in April, then carried on attending over the summer, and now they are holding another introductory course and it feels very much like school when the new kids arrive and you're in the second year and not the youngest and littlest any more. I can very nearly remember everyone's name, although if they sling in a multi-syllable Sanskrit name I forget it in less than 2 hours. I spent one of my days off with the Buddhists I know of old, and pumped them mercilessly for information, and am still processing the results to decide whether to just stick with the meditation and mindfulness practice or to dip my toe further into the metaphorical Buddhist pond.

Topic 2: Food and drink

I have already mentioned the chocolate reduction plan, and I think I have reached the stage of acceptance in the continuum of despair-anger-denial-acceptance that I was once taught follows a trauma. Back when I was taught about this, the examples used were having your car stolen and sight loss, but it seems to apply to no end of situations including, it seems, breaking a serious chocolate habit.

I have continued my tour of Leamington Lunches on my days off - there are more restaurants than I have days off in a year, but I'm trying to pick those who charge less than £10 for lunch. There are still plenty to go. This Tuesday's was Cuban - I had a stew involving peppers, sweet potato and chickpeas and some amazing yellow bread that appeared to have been fried.

Other eating and drinking highlights in the recent past included a night out with work colleagues starting with drinks at Pub Next Door and progressing to a very fine Turkish/Eastern Mediterranean restaurant in town. It was such a success that those present immediately formed a Dining Club and set a date for the next outing. There was also my second Whisky Tasting evening with Mr M's whisky collection and matched food. I am very lucky to have been invited on two separate occasions, and there may even be a Whisky Tasting On Tour event in Leamington at some point. I discovered that I am starting to like whisky. It's always worth persisting with these things.

On the same trip to London there were two more food-related experiences. The first was the local international grocer where this time I picked two random tins of spinach-based and aubergine-based slop (I've already tried the spinach-based one topped with an egg - yum). The second was a Japanese restaurant in Notting Hill, where five of us ate until we burst for only £15 a head. Delicious and good value.

Topic 3: Housing and the LTRP

Not much progress to report on the LTRP, although the architect has now surveyed and drawn up plans of the ground floor in anticipation of our next meeting, in which we will define the alterations. These are primarily to allow more light into the kitchen and replace the stairs, but also to extend the kitchen a little to provide a utility/boot room. Olf the builder who worked on the garage finally came round to accept payment (I had to chase several times!) and he may be able to lead on the kitchen works whenever that time may come.

I'm still gradually emptying the loft (books and motorbike parts in the last fortnight) so that Ilf the handyman can sort out the electric lights in the upstairs rooms. In the meantime Mr M and Lola II stole Ilf and he decorated large parts of their house. Now that I've been to see it, the work done looks absolutely lovely. Ilf then came round and gave me a bunch of flowers to thank me for referring the job to him.

Topic 4: Financial matters

• I researched and bought car insurance A WEEK BEFORE IT WAS DUE. I am so proud of this.
• I bought fancy carbon fibre walking poles for my holiday A MONTH IN ADVANCE. [Can you see a theme developing?]
• I joined a team of four Young People and we won a tenner each on the pub quiz, with a score of 76 out of 80. I probably contributed no more than 4 answers out of 76, but I like to think that without my 4 we would have come second.
• The posh butcher in town sharpened three of my knives for free. Unfortunately they only gave me two of them back, but produced the third when I went back to enquire. Still, I now have three sharp knives, which is lovely.
• I have listed quite a few random items on ebay, one of which has sold! I am not optimistic about any of the others. So after postage and commission I am £1.43 in profit. Now I'm ready to start on the postal mechanisation material. Hang on to your hats for literally pennies of profit.
• With the help of Mr M I have switched my current account and opened another three accounts including transfers between them in order to maximise interest rates. Now every time I am faced with paying for something I have to think for five minutes about which card to use depending on whether I qualify for cashback or Clubcard points or a foot massage or puppies/kittens. However, not only is this a great problem to have, I am about to spend a whole load of money on my kitchen, so maybe it won't be a problem for long.

Topic 5: Work

I have had my first abysmal failure with a patient whom I will not see again (nor would the patient want to see me). Much reflection and 'what could I have done differently' but it's someone who's been within the service for years and years and nobody else has done much better. Apart from that, I have delivered three DESMOND courses for Type 2 patients in the last month and am looking forward to not delivering any more until December. I do enjoy it though, seeing how much people learn.

Philharmonia and philately

Borough Market, May 2016

There has been a long weekend, which in my case extended to Tuesday due to my habitual day off, and it feels as though I have packed in several weekends' worth of excitement. Things that happened: I did not buy a tenor saxophone mouthpiece, I met a man who struck up a conversation (and this in London, mind) and who then offered to sell me a baritone saxophone, I bought said baritone saxophone, I met a lot of fans of the football club Sheffield Wednesday, I met two people I last worked with in 1988 (and one of whom I had not seen since then), people who weren't Lola II and Mr M came round to my house and stayed overnight and I think I managed to behave as a welcoming host rather than a reclusive hermit, two other people who still weren't Lola II and Mr M came round to my house and had a play with the baritone saxophone and were almost as excited as me, and I went to an organ recital. And this doesn't include regular ordinary things like cleaning, cooking, food shopping and running. And I went to my physiotherapy appointment about my painful shoulder.

The previous week-and-a-bit was also full of mysteries and wonders which did include Lola II and Mr M as well as the rest of my UK-based family and a little bit of non-UK-based family. Things that happened: I attended a Study Day about Type 1 diabetes and exercise (a blog post on that subject is a complex scholarly work and still in the pipeline), stayed with Lola II and Mr M, went to Borough Market and the Museum of London with Lola II, attended the UK-based family event, had lunch at a nice garden centre in Little Venice, didn't attend the non-UK-based family event (but neither did the non-UK-based family so that was all right), and spent a day with mum and a Postal Mechanisation Man sorting through dad's collection of philatelic material. I'm using the word 'philatelic' loosely to mean anything relating to the postal service.

I think I should stop complaining about being busy because this now seems to be my normal state. Since I bought the Fitbit there have only been two days when I haven't walked more than 10,000 steps without any extra effort - I thought I would have to try much harder.

I shall pick a few highlights from all the things that have been happening.

The non-UK-based family event involved a cousin who had been in touch to see if he could catch up with us on his way through London. We very nearly put mum and dad in a taxi for an hour and me in a car for even longer in order to meet at Lola II's house but in the end, for various reasons, we didn't. This was a good thing, because the meeting that the cousin was attending between flights took up all the intervening time and he didn't make it to Lola II's house either.

Dad's philatelic collection is big, very big. We have been trying to whittle it down now that he is not actively collecting it any more. One large chunk is all about Postal Mechanisation - in basic terms, the use of machines rather than people to sort mail. Just to prove that for any human interest there is an interest group, there exists a Postal Mechanisation Study Circle (PMSC), whose newsletter led me to contact its Secretary to see if they could provide any support in disposing of dad's collection in a more constructive way than through the medium of a bonfire.

Having spent four hours in his company, I can say that the Secretary of the PMSC is a lovely man. He extended a trip to London with a Tube journey out to mum and dad's house and went through the entire postal mechanisation collection with enthusiasm and excitement. He took a small proportion away with him for auction, and left the rest in piles representing valuable material, stuff that might sell on eBay, and a disappointingly small amount that could be thrown out. There is still much work to do - this collection is perhaps a quarter of the stuff that's still in boxes and cupboards - but I can't manage any more at the moment, especially with the LTRP and the new saxophone-related activity.

The new saxophone-related activity started with a proposal to meet up with people who were kibbutz volunteers at the same time as me back in 1987-88. The proposed venue was Baker Street, and there is a shop nearby that had been recommended as somewhere that would allow me to try out different saxophone mouthpieces, because I had been told that the difficulties I had with the low notes on my tenor sax might be resolved with a different mouthpiece. The tenor sax is extremely heavy, and usually when I go to London it is to the outer fringes where my family lives, so this was a perfect opportunity to get the sax to the shop without a great deal of messing about on the Tube.

So I arrived at the shop with my tenor saxophone and they duly provided me with different mouthpieces to try. It became very clear that the problem was between the mouthpiece and the chair - or possibly the saxophone itself. None of the different mouthpieces solved the problem, so I sat in front of the cafe next door (it was a lovely morning) with a cup of tea and pondered my options. This is when conversation started with the chap at the next table about saxophones and he offered me the baritone sax which was to be found in the basement of his shop across the road. A friend had recently managed to borrow one of these and told me it was worth more than his car, so the £100 price tag seemed like a bargain, especially as it played much better than my tenor sax.

This left me in London with two large saxophones and a meeting in the Baker Street pub - it is a large pub but none of us anticipated that it would be entirely full of football supporters due to an event known as a 'play-off' (I had to ask) which would allow either Sheffield Wednesday or Hull City to be promoted to the Premier League. This pub was restricted to the Sheffield supporters - Hull fans were refused entry and directed to a different pub to avoid any trouble. Unfortunately kick-off was not until 5pm so the pub would be full to bursting for several more hours. Which meant that I and my two large saxophones were not ideally suited to a quiet pint and a chat with ex-volunteers. We eventually decamped to an alternative location and had a lovely time.

There was a lot more activity to come within the long, long weekend, but I shall jump to the physio appointment I had on Tuesday to see if anything could be done about my painful shoulder. This was damaged during ski holiday #2 and has been giving me some trouble for two months but only in certain movements: applying the car handbrake, removing tight clothing over my head, carrying heavy luggage up steep stairs. I wasn't optimistic that physiotherapy would achieve anything, but in fact it achieved a diagnosis of inflammation in the joint between the top of the humerus and the acromion process of the shoulder blade causing some 'impingement'. Three treatments were suggested - a stretching exercise I should do a few times a day, anti-inflammatory gel and ice. It should get better slowly, but I have the option to contact the physio again within a month if I think I need to.

The usual complaining about being busy

Barclaycard Arena, Birmingham, May 2016

Well, it's been a busy time. If it hadn't been for some blog posts I drafted a while ago there would have been a whole lot of nothing new in this space. So I thought I'd just make a quick list of the few things that I might write about that have taken up my time in the last fortnight. Within a minute I had this:

Work

Cover for colleague: group education  and clinic
Type 1 education in new location
DESMOND Type 2 education
Meeting about insulin pump service

Not work

Badminton AGM
Shoulder: nurse/physio
Sports: running, badminton, Fitbit™
Cymbeline
Buddhism/meditation
Water meter
Blood donation
Sunday lunch in the pub
Police and Crime Commissioner election
Clarinet choir
National Badminton League final
St Albans
Disc golf

I should just leave it there and lie down in a darkened room. But I suppose I could expand a little on some of them.

Work

I was asked nicely to cover for a colleague who is off sick, and so far I have said yes to each request, although it means I have not had any period in the last two weeks within which I can catch up e.g. read or respond to emails and telephone messages, write letters etc. It has been made worse by delivering our Type 1 education in a new venue where we don't have access to computers, internets etc. This whole situation is unsustainable. The coming week will be no better, but I am going to use the extra hours I have accrued to take a day off and help mum with some Philatelic Business, of which more may be revealed after it has happened.

The meeting about the insulin pump service was quite interesting. We have been precipitated into a minor crisis by one of our nurses being on long term sick leave. Having coped for rather a long time we are now reviewing what we do a bit more seriously than usual, and it has become clear that the service we provide to people who use insulin pumps is particularly stretched. It was set up in 2006 on the basis of anticipating four new patients a year, and now we support more than a hundred people on pumps with at least one new one every month, not to mention the children and young people that we inherit from the paediatric service. From one consultant clinic once a month we now have two consultant clinics twice a month with no additional funding for nurses or dietitians.

It looked for a while as though a business case was going to be formulated for more nurses but with no reference to dietitians, and my manager has now retired (with a new one recruited but not yet started). So I pitched up at the meeting with the nurses, doctors, managers and finance people, and carried out my self-appointed role which was to add the words "and dietitians" every time the word "nurses" was uttered in the context of needing to fund more of them. Clearly this was irritating enough for them to start nodding in my direction and saying "and dietitians" for themselves. So that worked rather well.

The outcome of the meeting is slightly unnerving because rather than just scope the increased requirement for the pump service, they have decided to scope the requirements of the whole diabetes service at the site where I work. It would have taken an incredibly long time to look at just the pump service, so now we'll have to wait until quite close to the end of time before we get any new money. Not that there is any new money; the finance person revealed that the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) who pay for health services is pretty much broke.

Not work

Badminton club #2 has an AGM and stops for the summer. Club #1 is more disorganised in terms of administration - we had AGMs when I was club secretary, but not before or since, and hardly anyone turned up - but at least we play on over the summer. Club #2's AGM is held with a fish and chip supper and then a game of skittles, and was great fun. I sometimes think I can do this socialising thing; I used to be good at it long ago.

My left shoulder is still painful and has hardly improved in the six weeks since my injury, so I finally made an appointment to see a Nurse Practitioner at the surgery, who gave me a form to allow me to self-refer to a physiotherapist. She also advised me to take paracetamol instead of ibuprofen. I look forward to the physio appointment not least for its blog potential. I am not optimistic that the shoulder situation will be improved by physio, but what do I know?

Running and badminton continue, and I have bought a Fitbit™ with my TV watching points (and what do points mean?) but am struggling to operate the software that makes it worth having, which I take to be another sign of the inevitable march towards senility. For those not aware of the latest in fitness technology, a Fitbit is a device, in my case a wristband, which monitors the wearer's activity. I let it count my steps. If you enter the food and drink you consume it will advise on calories in and out; it should monitor your sleep but I can't make that bit work. It has exposed the limitations of my mobile phone, but my contract is about to expire and I'll see if an upgrade will help the situation.

Culture news: I went to see Cymbeline at the RSC in Stratford. I haven't been there since they remodelled the theatre, which is a long time. We had seats in the gods, which in the new theatre entails raised seats a bit like stools with footrests. It was OK to start with, but as the play entered its fourth hour I definitely started to feel a bit fidgety. A little way into the second half one of the friends I came with very suddenly left the auditorium. It turned out that he remembered he'd left the oven on, and had quite a time of it trying to contact various people to check that his flat wasn't on fire. I'd given him a lift so he couldn't just nip back home.

I meant to look up the plot before going but didn't get round to it, but another of the friends I was with had looked on Wikipedia and gave us a quick outline. Unfortunately for us in this production they'd decided to change the sex of some of the key characters, so the Wikipedia description of the king made no sense until we worked out he was now a queen. Also, the white queen and her white consort had managed to produce a black son, which was also rather confusing. Which just demonstrates our ignorance of our literary inheritance. But the play was good, and I'm always surprised at being able to follow the plot despite understanding only about one line in four.

I have a whole blog post about the Buddhism and meditation thing waiting in the wings, so I'll say no more about that. I also had a water meter installed which took no more than fifteen minutes and has reduced my (albeit estimated) water bill to a shadow of its former self. Blood donation went without incident, Sunday pub lunch was enormous and delicious, and the PCC election was pointless. I looked up the candidates the day before but I haven't bothered to find out who won. I take part in elections because I believe everyone must, but I have to admit finding it more difficult to justify this stance with each successive bunch of useless self-serving politicians.

The clarinet choir is good fun, although this time our leader has chosen pieces that stray much too far into the upper registers, to the extent that a much more enthusiastic and committed first clarinettist has invested the thousands of pounds required to buy an E flat clarinet, and I am envious. I am having to look up fingerings for top F's and G's that I haven't used since I was at school.

More badminton: the NBL competition was invented very recently to fill the gap between National teams and ordinary club leagues (the two league teams I play with were both relegated, so I am delighted that we may avoid being beaten into the ground every time I step onto the court next year). Four of these NBL teams battled it out for the top spot on the warmest sunniest day of the year so far, meaning that I spent the majority of the day indoors. It wasn't as good as the International competition in the same venue, but a nice day out. Birmingham Lions beat Loughborough University in the final.

The day in St Albans came about at short notice when Lola II phoned to say she was going there with some overseas visitors on a Tuesday when I wasn't working, so I avoided many of the jobs I was supposed to be doing by joining her there. We went around the Verulamium museum, a Roman theatre and the cathedral with interludes of tea, lunch, more tea and cake.

On Sunday I organised a badminton (club #1) social event to play disc golf, which uses baskets instead of holes and small frisbees in place of golf balls. After a full round of 18 baskets in sunny weather with only one frisbee lost in the river, I was tired out. Not that we're at all competitive (except we really are), I came second last.

And to bring us bang up to date, I have Ilf working in Lola Towers today and within the first hour he changed two door handles, cut another door to allow it to close, finished the unfinished laminate flooring and is now working on the external lights and the kitchen electrics that he condemned last time he was here. I've chased Olf the garage man for the last two jobs, but still haven't looked for an architect to advise on remodelling the ground floor. Mowing the lawn yesterday I was even considering more ambitious plans for the garden!