All go

It seems to have been a chaotic few days, hence my silence. First was the Farmers' Market, where we had a good stock up of meat after our holiday.

That day, too, we sorted our plans for Xmas. Last year, we had Christmas lunch with MK & Helen. It worked well. This year, now MK is no longer with us, Helen wants to spend her Xmas with family. Not surprising.

We had been dithering whether to find a restaurant here or go away for the holiday period. We tried to book a table at our local pub to find all places taken - had been since last Christmas!

Then we discovered that Den & Fran were tempted to cancel their Xmas trip & instead spend the money on a honeymoon just after their wedding though they weren't very keen on the idea of Xmas on their own. We suggested they might like to join us for a meal somewhere. They instantly cancelled their arrangements & proposed somewhere we might like to check out as a possible venue. So, after the Farmers' Market we set off, tried some food, looked at the wine list & disabled access & booked a table for four for Christmas Day. We didn't really feel like going away again. We've only just got back! And we will have the bonus of their company. It should be good.

Now we've got both lots of insurance sorted. Our nuisance calls ceased after the Fox blasted at them. I'm beginning to think they've finally got the message.

Then yesterday a holiday brochure arrived. I'm surprised to say I found myself quite excited by one place, a gite near Cannes in the South of France. I'm contemplating giving them a ring later today to check the access. If all seems okay, we're thinking of booking for next spring. It's not often we both instinctively take to something, but when we do it usually turns out to be the place, table, wallpaper etc for us. I hope it works out. It will be something to look forward to in the long winter months.

And now winter seems to be catching up rapidly. The clocks have gone back. Once more it will be dark(ish) by 5. Soon it will be considerably earlier than that. Geriatrics' Corner is busy getting itself ready for the coming nuptials next month & there's already 14 to come to the Christmas party meal in December. It's all go.

East west divide/union

Trouble has come once more to our street. Old readers will remember our next door neighbour, BJ, who lost his wife a few years ago in tragic circumstances. He subsequently remarried, this time a Chinese lass he met when he was working abroad, based in Dubai. Over the weekend, they returned to England after a stay in China .

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, he had to get an ambulance out to get her into hospital. She was burning up.

It turned out that she had a kidney infection. After treatment she was moved to the ward. BJ was shocked. His first wife had died as a result of a kidney infection, & here now, in the very same ward, was his second wife, also with a kidney infection. He feared the worst.

Fortunately his wife was able to come home late in the afternoon. I've just been round to wish her well. It must have been very frightening for her. Her English language is poor, so it must have been difficult to understand what was happening around her in a system so very different from her own.

I gather from BJ she's brought with her a suitcase of Chinese food delicacies & medicines, things she's not able to buy here. In the English hospital she gets pills & injections rather than herbs. As for food, that she asked BJ to bring in. He's no Chinese chef. He ends up taking in a KFC bucket of food & she doesn't even like chicken!

Still she's home. She's still having pain & not feeling entirely well, but she thinks she's over the worst. I hope so. She's having enough problems adjusting to England.

She finds it very cold. This seems surprising when in the part of China she comes from their winter temperatures are well below zero. The difference is that she's never experienced wind on the scale we have it here on the Irish Sea coast. That blows straight through her. As for the culture, she still cannot understand a culture in which the old & disabled are shovelled off into nursing homes rather than being looked after by the family in the family home.

There's only one good thing about England in her opinion. In China you live in an apartment flat in a tower block - very comfortable with all mod cons from the photos they've shown me - rather than a house with a garden. She does like the idea of being able to step out of your own door into your own garden. But that is little consolation for being away from her family & in the cold.

The only thing is, for BJ, no matter how little time he spends here, he ultimately feels England is home & he wants to keep his roots here. A dilemma for them both to solve.

Food days

"What's for dinner?" they ask at the Pub.

"Duck with cherry sauce," we reply.

"With black cherries?" asks Gaz, the Pub owner/manager.

"Yes," we say.

Envious eyes all turn our way.

"But it's Monday!" exclaim our friends.

I cannot understand why particular meals should be reserved for particular days, why the more extravagant meals like duck & cherry sauce are too good to have on a Monday. I can see the weekend is the only time when many people have the time to cook something more complicated &/or time-consuming. In times past, before the days of fridges & freezers, that meant Monday was often the left over weekend roast. I don't understand why that should apply now.

I suspect they would be equally alarmed at the idea of us having cod for dinner today. I can almost hear the words "But it's not Friday". As far as I'm concerned any day of the week is a potentially good day for fish.

Insurance pains

It's that time of year again. The car & house insurance are both due soon.

This year I'm being pestered by people I've had quotes from in previous years. This is a new phenomenon & I don't like it. I feel I'm being pressured into making decisions before I'm ready.

This really got to me last week when I'd hardly had chance to get through the post that had collected from our holidays. Before I'd even had the opportunity to open the renewal notices & see the proposed premiums from our current insurers, they were onto me. I suggested they just left their numbers & I'd get back to them when I had had chance to get myself sorted. But no. That isn't good enough to them. They will ring me back.

And THEY DID. DAILY.

They rattle off figures for various eventualities & I sat that dumb, not taking in a thing they said.

As the week went on & we had our bad health news, still they continued to ring. Sure the price went down, but my mind couldn't focus on what they were saying.

I was beginning to dread the phone ringing. I even began to not answer the phone until I heard the other party's voice on the answerphone. That way I knew whether it was friend or foe first.

Over the weekend I've calmed down sufficiently to be able to look at our present insurers' quotes. And you know what? No hassle & lower quotes.

I'm rather relieved. I was at the stage of thinking I didn't want to change. The very pressure being put on me deterred me. And yet at the same time I didn't want to miss out on a bargain. It seems I don't have to. Now I'm ready to say a definite no to the pests & stay where we are.

Surely I'm not the only one put off by such sales tactics. Or am I?

Old crockery

Thursday was a traumatic day. We spent an hour at the surgery getting results of tests. The Fox has all ready told his readers about his medical problems. I ended up back at the surgery on Friday.

My problems are related to blood pressure. Somehow I've managed to get the upper figure, the diastolic, high yet the lower figure, the systolic, very low. This means increasing my blood pressure pills is not an option as I would just be blacking out as both figures would go down including the systolic number. So I'm now on water pills. Just mild diuretics.

All this new knowledge came to light when I mentioned I was having a few dizzy spells & my ankles seem to be swelling up a bit for no particular reason. The swelling was causing no pain or discomfort. My ankles are their normal slim selves most of the time, but I keep having spells when they swell up for a few days/weeks. My doctor instantly took my blood pressure. As I had had to rush to get to the appointment on time, he thought that was probably all that was the cause of the high blood pressure then. To be on the safe side he suggested I had another reading when we got back from our hols & I was more relaxed. That was what happened to me on Thursday to discover my blood pressure had only gone up in the intervening couple of weeks.

So now I'm on yet more pills. Since the doctor reckoned the ankle swelling was probably the result of water retention due to lack of exercise, hopefully that means my ankles will now stay slim. At least, these water pills do not seem to have had an adverse effect on my bladder. I've not had any urgent need to rush to the loo, as so many people do. Just as well, as I don't think I could rush anywhere these days. He did say they were only mild so shouldn't have that sort of side effect.

Now we wait for next week for the results of the blood tests done on the Fox, & next month to see if the tweaking of both our medication has achieved the desired effects.

I can't say much for this growing old. It just seems to be a case of one thing after another packing up. Still, as the Fox says, it's better than the alternative.

Shopping

Yesterday we did the first food shop since our return home. Before that we'd only bought milk.

It's good once more to have fresh veg in the house. We're celebrating tonight with the Fox getting out his trusty wok & doing a stir-fry.

It took us ages doing the shopping. This was not because the list was long but rather that, in our absence, Morrisons had rearranged the shelves. With the result we went to the usual shelf for tinned fruit to discover mustards & pickles. The eggs had become flavoured milks. (We eventually found the eggs with the bread!) The crackers had disappeared to the far end of the crisps & other nibbles shelf.

I know the idea is to make you buy more, to see anew the range of products, but I do find it very frustrating. We must have gone round the shop several times, having to ask staff where things now were. And at the end of the day I bought what was on my list & nothing more. Indeed some things I didn't buy because I lost patience hunting for them!

In this area, Morrisons supermarket (where we tend to shop) is recognised as the most popular supermarket with people with mental health problems because they rarely change the lay out, unlike the other stores. Sure the end shelving, the special offers, change but rarely anything more substantial. Hopefully this will be it for a while. Hope so!

Secure?

Parkland & Reggia di Caserta

This morning I found myself reading an article in this week's Radio Times, entitled "The night our democracy changed", about the Brighton bombing in 1984. It made me stop & think, even connecting together some very disjointed facts in my mind.

It had never occurred to me just how much greater the level of security around politicians had become since those days. I realise, of course, how much more surveillance generally there has been since the Twin Towers & the London bombings, how many more armed police there seems to be on the streets & in airports. It wasn't until I was reading this article that I found myself thinking of some of the deleterious effects of all this security, to question indeed if all this security wasn't in fact dangerous.

The article mentioned that these days, we, the electorate have to be scanned & photographed if we decide to venture into the Houses of Parliament to see our MP.

Suddenly something clicked in my mind. On our Italian holiday, we'd visited the Reggia di Caserta. This magnificent palace was built in the 18th century to rival Versailles. As we went round, faced with such opulence, we couldn't help thinking about the cost of building a place like this, not just in financial terms.

As with Versailles, the people living in this, almost, city must have got used to this environment, inevitably losing contact with the reality of the life of the general working population around them & who they ruled. The taxes to build & maintain the palace & its vast elaborate grounds, presumably gathered from the poor, must have been horrendous.

One of the causes of the French Revolution was undoubtedly the fact that the monarchy lost touch with the ordinary Frenchman. Marie-Antoinette's supposed comment of "Let them eat cake", missed the point. The average person just wanted not to starve, to be able to afford some bread, anything, for their stomach & to have a shelter over their heads. Her country idyll in the Petit Trianon did not reflect the life of the average farmer trying to eke out a living. The more the monarchy & aristocracy cut themselves off from the reality of most of the population's life, as they moved out of Paris into this golden cage, the more they ceased to understand the life & needs of that population. People can only be pushed so far before they rebel.

Also, connected in my mind is the present re-emergence of the current MP's expenses scandal in this country. You hear the MPs defending their expenditure as being normal, not excessive. Don't they realise that many people, not necessarily high earners, have to have 2 homes these days? These people don't get all their expenses, including mortgages paid by their employers. Nor can they claim them as work expenses on their income tax forms. That's why people are so up in arms.

I accept that a certain level of expense is incurred through the job of being an MP. You do have to attend an awfully large number of functions, dressed appropriately. The cost of living in London is high & sometimes you do have to entertain. If they represent constituencies far from London, they do need to be able to afford regular trips to those constituencies to keep in touch with the concerns of their electorate. They may need to travel abroad to discover the reality of how things are done elsewhere & bring back any better solutions in education, health services, prevention of crime etc. But they don't need huge TVs, duck houses, vast estates requiring cleaners & gardeners.

The idea of security is great, but it does bring problems. I admire the Queen for continuing to venture out to meet the people without being constantly behind a bulletproof screen. And she does that despite being shot at in the past. It's time the MPs showed similar courage & maybe meet their electorate, & not just the party faithful. You never know they may even begin to understand the concerns of you & me.