ooops!

This isn't a rehearsal, this is it!

Picture the scene, most of the family in our kitchen, Alfie is lying - asleep - on the floor as far out of the way as he can get. Samuel is sitting on Hazels chair and half watching the TV. Wendy is sitting on the swivel chair and chatting idly with Hazel who is standing at the worktop end. I am on one of the ordinary kitchen chairs as is Lulu. It's very quiet as Corey is eating a small fromage-frais in his high chair.

Suddenly, there is a cry, Corey has decided to stick his pudding in his eye! Tears and minor screaming. I am closest so I attempt to clean him up. Lulu comes across to help me. We clean his face up but he is still rubbing his eye with a very puddeny hand. "Can someone get me a damp cloth please?" says Lulu. As I move in the direction of the sink, Hazel, who has moved up closer to see if she can help turns around to go back to the sink and stands on poor Alfie who is still minding his own business and hasn't moved. He squeals and panics. Hazel goes down with the biggest thump imaginable onto the wooden floor. Alfie runs under the table and hides in case we decide it's his fault. Hazel groans and tries to sit up. I reach her and ask if she is OK "No", she says, "I've hurt my wrist". Wendy and I both came to the same conclusion, broken!

This broke up the party somewhat and I took Hazel to A&E. "Sorry, it's a four hour wait here, try the Cumberland Centre". We go to the Cumberland Centre and she is seen immediately as by now her wrist has a very ominous lump on it. X-ray, plaster and letter to take into A&E on Monday morning as early as possible after 09.30. Hazel had a fairly comfortable night and we got to A&E about 09.45. Here, she was also seen immediately and moved into a treatment bay. She had her wrist positioned and re-plastered over the next hour or so and then had to go into recovery for over an hour. By the time we got home it was past 14.00 and we were starving. Today and tomorrow we are at work and then, on Thursday, we start all over again with the fracture clinic who will check progress and decide whether we can still go on holiday or whether Hazel needs a plate in her wrist.

Corey stopped screaming almost immediately in order to see what had happened to Nanny Hazel.

Alfie was not told off, he didn't do anything wrong.

Hazel and I have still not watched the first episode of the latest series of Downton Abbey.

Another week older............................

It's been a fascinating week in many ways. Several very interesting things have been brought to my attention about colleagues, both past and present. I have recovered from last weekend's exertions very slowly. Hazel and I went to our first, and very probably only, new citizen ceremony and we had a spectacular meal cooked for us by said new citizen. On Tuesday, we went, with Zemi, to see her take the oath and become a UK citizen. All very organised and, I thought, very friendly ceremony in the Lord Mayors parlour beside the civic centre. The Deputy Lord Mayor was presiding this week and, as he and his wife are Sikhs, they attended in their own robes plus their respective chains of office. And very good they looked too. They are also very chatty and pleasant to talk to. Anyway, Zemi received her certificate and had her photo taken with the Deputy Lord Mayor and we had tea and bickies and went back to work. Yesterday evening, Zemi cooked us a meal loosely based on both Indian and Chinese cuisine but bearing a very strong relationship to African food ideals. I can honestly say it was wonderful! It was deceptively simple in appearance but  incredibly tasty without being too spicy. She even managed to provide two different rice dishes, one not in the slightest bit  hot, for me, and a somewhat hotter version for Hazel and her. I still don't know exactly how she managed to cook the chicken to such a perfect quality but I intend to find out. After the meal, we just sat there for four hours and chatted. The time just melted away. I finally took her back to her flat at about 12.30. Slept like a log and even managed to get to work on time this morning.

Oh, the agony!

I spent a week on the support desk which was good in many ways, the people, being busy all the time etc. Unfortunately, it was also not so good in others, the chair, the unbelievable boredom of repeating the same task over and over again. Still, I had better get used to it as, before very long I should be there one week in seven. My major pain though was caused by spending the weekend dismantling our built in units in the bedroom. I have managed to remove three quarters of them now with just a few bits to remove over the next few evenings. Sadly, with the removal of our big bed, I was forced to sleep on a single bed and the mattress has nearly killed me. I did it for the best reasons but, now I have cut off the mains electric to the lights and TV, I have moved into Sallys bed and it's just so comfortable when compared to the single job I was using. Tonight, I am off to Mount Gould Hospital for my MRI scan and that should give me a much better idea of how bad my hips are and how deep my arthritis is 

Just in time...................

I felt much better on Saturday, just in time to begin stripping out the bed and mattress from our master bedroom. The first thing I had to do was to move the contents of the drawers under the bed to a place of safety. This took a lot longer than we had anticipated as we had filled them up quite a bit in the last twenty years or so. Then, on to the big stuff. I did the heavy moving at our end then Hazel took the stuff to the dump on her own as then, the men at the dump would take over and move it out of the car and into the various skips. This all worked a treat, and, by the end of Sunday, we had everything but the carpet removed. On Monday, we helped our friend Martin to remove his desk from the uni in time for his move to Northampton and then we took up the carpet and whilst Hazel took that to the dump, I cleaned up the floor of the bedroom and moved all the things on the floor so that we can work in there. This looks great on the screen but, there is a down side. My back, arms, knees and hips were burning by the time I finished. After my shower, I had to liberally plaster myself with Ibuprofen gel in order to get a comfortable nights sleep. I awoke feeling much better this morning but my lower back was still painful. Another gel coat sorted me out and I now feel a lot better. Until next time..............................

Tramadol

is not a very nice drug.

I was prescribed the stuff once before and it messed with my body for a few days so I stopped it.

This time around, I stuck it for two weeks and it has wrecked me. On Sunday evening, I stopped taking it and Monday wasn't too bad but I was still suffering from the fairly strong effects of the thing. On Tuesday, I began to get clear of it and, for a time, felt better. Later though I actually felt worse. Wednesday was not great either but a lot of the wrongs seem to have now been righted as I am able to eat again. I still feel very week today but, by returning to work, I am hoping my body will pick up the traces again.

My problems with Tramadol were, constipation, water retention, sinus issues and all of the knock on effects from these main problems. As I also take plenty of other heavy duty medicine for my heart condition, I must assume that the combination of the two is what caused my problems. Never again!

As numb as .................

I have been sitting down all morning staring at a screen and moving logs around. I seem to have done a lot of work but for very little return. I still have this afternoon and all of tomorrow to go as well. What am I doing? I am taking the raw data in from users and pushing it out in a more coherent and usable form. Well, that's what it says on the tin anyway. In reality, I spend a lot of my time trying to make sense of the emails sent in by a bunch of technical tyros and then pass it to the clever ones to do the work. It's called the support desk and it's brain numbingly dull. Nonetheless, we all have to do the training to be ready for when we all take on the might of the ignorant ones and take a job from beginning to end. The only people looking forward to that time are the current support desk permanent staff who can't wait to get out in the field. And who can blame them!

Imagine, if you will,

a weekend so tiring that everyone involved has to go to bed early and is still tired on the Monday. Well, that's about half of our weekend. Lulu came out of hospital on Sunday late afternoon. Her mum collected her and brought her to us. So Wendy and Lulu are tired. Ian was late finishing and had to get a taxi to our house and was so tired that he all but collapsed as he got through the front door. Hazel stayed up and saw him in so she was tired. I went to bed at ten completely knackered from my weekend of fun and frolics with the boys so I was tired. Corey and Samuel had wakened early and neither had a nap during the day so they were both tired. On Monday, Ian and Lulu walked around looking for the runaway Molly and, lo and behold, she crawled out from under a car and went straight to Ian for a cuddle. She seems none the worse for her lost ten days apart from a tick and being very hungry.