Food Parcels

I sort of started a diet last week. This morning in the post came a letter from the British Red Cross. I haven't opened it, but I presume it is the arrangements for them to fly food parcels in to me if I start feeling faint.

God bless 'em!

The future isn't Orange.

Not for me anyway.

I decided to set up a wireless network for our machines at home. It has been a nightmare. And all because of Orange. When Marj set up her ISP accont they gave her the username. There is a problem. It is 36 characters long. Most routers, etc, accept only a maximum of 32 charcters. And Orange won't issue her a new username. They accept the only way to overcome the problem is to cancel the contract and take out a new one. So we are. With someone else!

Now we just have to wait while they drag their heels giving us our MAC code. They say 5-7 days. We'll see. It should have been immediate and were at day three and nothing yet. I feel a complaint coming on. And compensation.

The Ends of the Earth.

Off for a week in Colwyn Bay. Looking forward to any few minutes when it isn't raining.

Day Out

I shall be spending the day at Moda UK watching models parade about in skimpy underwear.

There may be photos!

But not for you lot. You perverts!

The Sound of Music

Well, this is something you don't see too often in Surrey.



We were at an anglo-swiss wedding yesterday. As we arrived at the reception we drank Pimms on the lawn and listened to an Alpenhorn. Pretty certain I've not done that before.

Fame & Fortune

I see I am on the radar of the esteemed London Blogger Diamond Geezer. Hello, if you pass this way.

I'm off knocking doors to try find business. This is the least favourite activity of my life but there's a too good incentive to miss for doing so.

Anyway, it's taking my mind off Barclays Bank who up till a month or so ago were fine but in the last month have gone absolutely down the drain. I shan't rant here though, tempting as it might be. All I will say is that now completes my entire list of high street banks who have broken banking law. What is moes worrying is that the people you talk to don't even know that. Computer says "jump". And they do.

Delusions of Grandeur

I'm not sure who are the most delusional. England fans who though w might win the World Cup or the players in post match conferences talking about how they played.

Matthew Upson missed the best chance of the conference when asked "Where do you go from here?" He failed to say "home".

Other great comments were, the ubiquitous, "We have to take the positives from it". And I think it was John Terry who said he thought "I really don't think we have played as badly in this tournment as people have made out." Cue hysterical laughter!

I have an answer. In future the England team should avoid any Premier League player. We should choose a squad of players who in all honesty never expected to play for the country. Would they win? No, of course not, but then could they be any worse, but what you would get is a squad of players who would really give 110% because it would be the highlight of their careers.

And whilst we're changing things, please stop the players being trained in media relations. I'm sick of, "we have to take the positives from this", "our work rate was really good" and "we all gave 110%".

Maybe now we'll stop treating footballers as demi-gods. Particularly Rooney. Well, that's when anyone discovers where he went missing for the last fortnight.

Time Travels

For those of us Leeds United fans of a certain vintage, Rob Greens' blunder on Saturday took us straight back to the days of Gary Sprake.

Black Comedy

I was at a performance of Black Comedy by Peter Schaefer last night. In fact I was at it on Thursday as well because I was helping Front of House.

The play takes place in the 1960s and is a typical farce of people being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The unusual thing about it, or it was for me as I haven't seen it done before in my limited theatrical experience, is that it takes place during a power cut. Well, the main fuse goes. This means that, in order to facilitate the audience, the lighting is in reverse. The ensemble starts in stage darkness and they are thrust into light when the fuse goes. Acting in full light very warily but at the beginning when all is meant to be well, striding round a cluttered stage as though they can see perfectly, seems to be quite difficult acting to keep going for 90 minutes plus. There are times when people strike a match or shine a torch and they go into semi-light. Well done the lighting man who kept pace perfectly.

If you get the chance to see it sometime I'd take it. It's funnier than those comedies that that Shakespeare wrote.

Oh God, It's a Camel.

So, as of a few minutes ago it is a hung Parliament.

Get ready to re-run this in about 6 months time.

Here comes the disappointment for all those who think that a hung Parliament means everyone works alongside each other in harmony and the world gets better and the fairies come out at night and do the housework.

The good news for us though is that Ann Keen has been ousted as our MP. She and her MP husband Alan have been known as Mr & Mrs Expenses for years. He however has held on to his seat in Feltham.

This election has turned out to be a rather unsatisfying feast.

Knife crime.

Just had Hospital Heroes on BBC1. 25% of all trauma admissions at The London Hospital are for knife wounds. Probably a more worrying but more accurate statistic than anything put out by the politicians this week on crime.

Why Stars and Celebrities Aren't The Same Thing.

Last night in Brentford there was a special concert. It was a fund raiser for the local church. These things are normally sparsely attended but last night it was packed. 400 local people came to watch plus a few from further away.

The person performing lives nearby and has done for 25 years. He wanders around the area and drinks in his local and is pretty much left alone, partly because most people are too young to remember him. The age group there last night were the key. Mainly around the 50 mark as his heyday was the late 70s. In fact his three major singles were all in 1979.

The reason so many came out was that just a couple of years later he stopped touring. For 20 years! And he only started touring when he started recording once more a few years back.

For those who remember that era, it was Nick Lowe. (Cruel to be kind : I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass).

And the reason for the title?

He obviously gave his time for free and in return set a few conditions. Not ones you'd normally expect though.
1) Because he knows his concerts have a high demand he only wanted publicity to be kept locally and by word of mouth pretty much. (The tickets still sold out with two weeks to go).
2) The only people to get in free were himself and his wife and kid if they wanted to come. Everyone else in his entourage, manager, two band members and technical people plus close friends, had to buy a ticket. And they did.
4) Tickets were to be kept at an affordable price. They were. Just £12.
3) It was pouring down with rain but 40 minutes before he was due to appear he walked through the door, shook off his umbrella, shook hands with the doorman said hello to the people on the ticket desk and quietly slipped in whilst the support act were playing. No fuss, no melodrama.

He played for just over the hour, a mixture of mainly "new era" songs and a couple of older ones. You could have heard a pin drop. I spoke with the vicar who I know and asked was he working out how to get the church this full on a Sunday? He reckoned he would have to get him to lead the worship. He was doing. Every member of that audience was there to marvel at the man, talented, quiet, unassuming, gentlemanly and a throughly good bloke.

And becaue of this thoroughly nice bloke we reckon the total raised will be about £8000 to keep a couple of the churches community projects running.

Now, that's the difference between a star and a celebrity.

Newark, Newark.

Spending this weekend in Sunny Newark. No, not the New York one, that which is about 130 miles north of here.

Newark holds a place in my heart from my travel as a young child. When we went home to Leeds by tain Newark was one of the landmarks even though it didn't stop there. The Yorkshire Pullman would leave Kings Cross, (books and games out), 1st Stop Peterborough, (The end of the beginning of the journey), pass through Newark slowly, (Well on the way now), stop at Wakefield, (Pack up stuff we're almost there), and finally arrive at the now defunct Leeds Central.

Who knows, I might even do a Diamond Geezer and report on it. But it won't be as good as his are and actually I'm going for Marjs sort of family reunion so I won't see most of Newark anyway. I can almost hear that collective sigh of relief!

All Clear

Come Monday I am going back to work. Gently at first but I need to do something before I die of boredom. Hopefully then there'll be something of interest to blog about as well although I decided I wouldn't bother with "the volcano" and certainly not the election.

So no more medical bulletins unless there's something worth saying.

POSH & BECKS = 22

Perhaps if young people spent more time reading books instead of celebrity magazines they might be able to play Scrabble by the traditional rules.

Little Thing Mean A Lot

We all take our bodies for granted. We do hundreds of little things each day that our bodies carry out and they're gone in a second without a thought. This all changes when anything affects your body be it a stiff neck ot a cut on the finger. An operation just brings more of them.

Each day brings a recovery in an everyday task which has been lost to me over the last few weeks. There have been many in the early days which I won't recount here as I'm sure you won't want to hear about them and their asociated bodily functions but this weekend has seen two milestones restoring comfort to my days and nights.

For three weeks I have had to sleep on my back as it has been too painful to lie on my side. Either of them. But as of Friday it has been possible to finally get 90 degrees round and lie there. It feels a bit funny but it isn't painful and I'll settle for that. The other breakthrough is tht I can now sneeze and cough without it hurting my "war wounds". No longer do I have to try and suppress the tickling in my nose or throat.

Every day now my body is healing faster. Mustn't overdo it. But I quite like keeping a detached eye on it and marvel at what our bodies can do. I sometimes moan about new aches and pains that happen as I get older but it's done a pretty good job for 50+ years and it certainly looks as though it's planning to keep going pretty much on top form for a good number of years yet.

Maybe I won't take my body for granted quite so much in the future. And perhaps I'll give it a helping hand by losing a bit of weight.

Call Me Scarface!

Well, Scartummy actually, but that's hardly the most threatening name.

The staples came out with a bit of a tweak yesterday morning. By the afternoon I was starting to come apart at the seam and the district nurse had to come back and steristrip part of the wound tht had decided to open a bit. At least there's no pain.

Still got a drain in but think that will be out in the next 24 hours or so.

So, on the mend. Although no work for another 4 weeks. And I'm still clutching the physiotherapists list of do's and don'ts which include no housework for 6 weeks!

The Road to Recovery.

Hi all. Surgery went well. Hurrah for mobiles!

T - 7

I've hasd my pre-op assessment and apprently I'm well enough to have my major op. Actually, I'm well enough to do anything so next Wednesday I go into hospital for a week or week and a half. You'll not notice cos I only post every fortnight anyway.

The discussion of my op has somewhat disconcerted me. Not the actual procedure itself but the possible side effects.

Due to the fact someone at some time might get an operation related in-growing toenauil and sue them for millions, you have to be told everything and the odds on it happening. I would rather they hadn't. The cancer I had was 1 in 50,000,000. Rare, but I got it. The chance of death under a general anaesthetic is about 1 in 5,000,000. Very rare, but 10 times more likely than the cancer I did get. I know that's not how it works but just being told on a scale of probable/possible/unlikely/rare would have been enough for me.

Luckily I haven't won the Euromillions otherwise it would be 15 times more likely that the anaesthetic would kill me. For the first time ever I'm glad my numbers haven't come up.

You don't have to be privileged.

There was a report in the papers last week that still 1/3 of our winter olympic team went to private schools. No mention that 2/3rds don't. However, and remember this is nothing to do with jealousy or anything like that, the government want changes made to reduce that 1/3rd even further. I'm not sure that introducing the luge as a sport to the youth of Brixton is going to make much difference though.

Then I was thinking, there is one sport where the government have done bugger all to try and open it up to the other class. Football. How many Premiership footballers went to private school? Why does the Government not do something about that?

It's 2010, and still the Labour party are hung up on "toffs" and the class war.