Monthly Archives: May 2021

The Second Shot

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I wrote a 350 word post earlier. It was about the GP surgery not having my blood test paperwork sorted despite me organising it three days ago. Then it went on to discuss the pharmacy and the lie they told me about texting me when my prescription was ready this afternoon. I feel you’ve heard the same complaints before so after ridding myself of the burden, I consigned it to WP limbo and decided to move on. I moved as far as the cooker, then as far as my seat in front of the TV. There I stayed for a while. I am now back writing a new post, and hoping that it’s going to be more interesting than the previous list of complaints.

It is ten months since I started taking poetry writing more seriously and in that time I have made 39 submissions. It’s going to be a bit of a slog raising that to a hundred a year, because I already feel that I spend a lot of time writing. I’m in the middle of a good patch at the moment – plenty of successful attempts with an even spread of rejection to keep my feet on the ground.

When I get a cluster of rejections I always start to think I’ll never be accepted again, and when I have  a good run of acceptances I worry that it can’t last forever. It is also the case that after a run of acceptances the next rejection hits harder. The mind of a writer is a strange thing.

I need two sets of submissions in the next couple of weeks – one to a magazine where I have had some minor success and one where I have had no success at all since a change of editor. I had a look through my list of pending/unfinished/work in progress and decided that there is very little there of any merit. I need a surge of enthusiasm and a flash of inspiration to set me going again.

TheDouble Rainbow

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That is the double rainbow that Julia photographed. It had faded a bit by the time she got to it, but as you know, it had disappeared completely by the time I got to it.

I have kept the photo small as it loses the effect if you make it too big. According to the Met Office link I’ve used in the first line the second rainbow is generally more spread out and paler, which seems to be the case here. The difference in sky colour is also explained, as the light, being reflected, cannot illuminate all the sky. It’s quite interesting and, according to the website, not rare. I can only remember seeing a handful, which makes it rare to me.

I had an interesting day today, when I finished work. We have had a car parking outside on the frontage for a few weeks now. I haven’t seen who parks it there, but it appeared to be a woman, from the style of air-freshener. It’s a slightly down at heel Ford and the combination of both these factors inclines me towards thinking that it’s one of the admin staff from the opticians at the end of the row. We have asked their staff not to park in front of the shop before. I haven’t actually seen who drives it o haven’t been able to have a word with them. There has to be a bit of give and take about the parking, but when somebody parks in your spot constantly it gets a bit wearing.

Anyway…

I am thinking calm thoughts

We emerged from the shop this afternoon to find that the Ford was not only on our frontage again (having arrived and parked after I did) but it had parked so close to me that I couldn’t get into my car. On account of my size and joint stiffness and the high transmission tunnel I can’t get in the passenger side.

So, acting on my suspicions, I went to the opticians and asked if they had someone working there with a dark grey Ford, even having the registration number written on the back of my hand. They said that they didn’t, but they suspected the people over the road, as they often use our parking and  are very inconsiderate. This is true, but they tend to have luxury brands (they seem to trade in cars so have a constantly changing selection of Audis, Mercs and BMWs). I then tried the Indian takeaway and the beauticians. No joy. This all took about 25 minutes. I was just going to go across the road and check if it did belong to them when a young woman approached and unlocked the car with her remote.

I won’t repeat the conversation word for word but it seems that she does work at the opticians, so I asked her not to park there in future but to park in front of her own shop, as her constant use of the space outside our shop causes us parking problems. I also pointed out to her that I had wasted 25 minutes as a result of not being able to get into my car, that I was not happy about this and that if it happened again I would not be as pleasant about it.

Very calm…

No doubt by the time this all gets repeated I will be some sort of unreasonable rampaging monster, but such is life. It’s amazing how selfish people can be. And in all that time, do you know how many times she apologised for the inconvenience she caused to both me and the shop – not once. We’ve had this all before – everybody is always in the right and they always have  a reason why it is OK for them to steal a space or barricade you in. And there are large numbers of people out there who consider you rude if you tell them you aren’t happy with them.

Grrr…

(And, by the way, the parking I refer to is private property in the front of the shops. All the shops know this, and they all know that they are supposed to keep to their own space. I’m not one of those people who considers the public road in front of their property to be their private property.)

Punctures, Poetry and Police Procedurals

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Sorry, after the events of the day, which included quite a lot of activity in the shop, I went home, had a puncture, called Green Flag to change the wheel (after the debacle of a few years ago) and embarked on my usual routine of wasting time. I was napping by midnight, when I should have been blogging and am, as usual, slightly ashamed of myself. However, I will get over it. In fact, I have. When I checked my emails this morning I find I have had two poems accepted by the Frogmore Papers.

Contrast this with yesterday. Yesterday I told you about a magazine that said it would “aim to” get back to me in three months. The Frogmore Papers got back to me in fourteen days. They have been about for a while and get plenty of submissions (“over 350” this time, according to the note) so it must be hard work. I’m going to modify my words of yesterday slightly – I’m not developing an artistic temperament, I’m developing a loyalty to people who work hard and make things easy for me.

Later this morning I’m off for a new tyre – by the time I’d got off the ring road to a quiet place to change a tyre it was beyond repair. It didn’t have a lot of life left in it, so this isn’t too bad, not like the time I ruined a brand new tyre by having to run with it flat for half a mile until I could get off a busy main road.

In fact, by the magic of modern technology, I have been to have my tyre replaced, sitting outside in the sun reading a crime novel and keeping my social distance. I’m back on tartan noir. You can’t escape it these days. The books are OK, but it’s a silly name. Two languages and black tartan? Really?

Time to make lunch now, then I may try a spot of poetry and some literary criticism. Or quizzes and a nap. The course of the afternoon has not yet been decided.

Gannets

I thought I’d give you Gannets today – from Bempton Cliffs in May 2017, when the weather was better, and we were allowed to travel.

It also ties in with the tartan noir, as they have quite a lot of Gannets in Scotland, as Tootlepedal’s holidays over the years have demonstrated.

Stirrings of Artistic Temperament

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I think I may be developing an artistic temperament. This is not good, as I am not an artist. I am a word mechanic and rely on calm and orderly conduct, plus a large vocabulary and a metaphorical bag of literary spanners – swapping words in and out and tightening things up as necessary. I don’t do art and I don’t do feelings.

I read through the submission guidelines of a magazine late last night and decided, despite previous decisions to the contrary, that I wasn’t going to submit. They just struck me as a bit sloppy and as I have a limited supply of poetry it seemed a waste to tie it up for three months or more when I could show it to people who would give me quicker responses (and allow me to resubmit it elsewhere).

I never seem to have enough good poetry to go round, so I can, to some extent, be selective. It’s not an approach that I want to extend, because I always feel the need to keep opportunities open, and it’s also borderline arrogance. I’m definitely not so good that I can afford to start acting like that.

However, I do remember from my business days that there are sales you don’t want to make, and sometimes you just need to walk away. In this case there are two other magazines that I can submit to. They are not necessarily quicker, but they are more professional and it is all laid out beforehand without any words like “we aim to”.  That’s a bit like saying “we often don’t”.

This attitude, of course, is partly due to my involvement with haiku and haibun – those magazines seem to be a bit quicker and more poet-centred in their approach. Many poetry magazines won’t give feedback, and say so in their submission guidelines, one editor even going as far as to say that if you want feedback you should go to a writers’ group. I can’t imagine anything worse than sitting in a room full of writers and having to read my work out. Even salad and exercise seem more attractive.

Rainbow – Spring Evening

The photograph is of a rainbow we saw tonight,. Julia go a shot with her phone which showed it as a double but I was just too late. Unfortunately I can’t download the photo she took so you will have to put up with mine.

A Piece of History

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I seem to have lost all my drafts. It doesn’t really matter in most cases as I rarely actually go back and use one, despite my good intentions. On the other hand I did write half a post last night that I wanted to finish it this morning.

Instead, I will move on to the next subject I had in mind. Prepare to be saddened.

We bought 5,000 cards plus assorted ephemera last week, the stock of a retired dealer. It has been gone through and is really just the leavings of a lot of mixed lots that he bought. It’s taken us the best part of two days to sort it – work that out on an hourly rate if you are interested in the hidden costs of running a collectors’ shop. We have found a few decent cards, but it’s mainly dross. However, they all needed going through and they are all sorted into counties now, which is always a test of general knowledge.

One interesting card we found was a pre-paid card addressed to a prisoner of war in Japanese hands. It has a positive message on the back, as you can see from the photo.

The Message

It was posted nine days before VJ Day, so it looked like a happy ending was imminent. However, many people were so ill by then of the war that you can’t guarantee a happy ending, even at that point. I decided that after I checked it on the Prisoner of War roll I’d check the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, just to see if he made it home.

I didn’t need to do that, as it happened. The first POW roll I checked had all the details I needed to close the story.

The list

I suppose the “Return to Sender” stamp on the front should have alerted me to the outcome.

649850 AC1 Victor Ernest Gordon never made it home. As you can see from the print-out behind the card, he was buried at sea on 6th November 1943, a year and a half before the postcard was posted. He died of beriberi, which is a variety of thiamine deficiency brought on by existing on a diet of white rice.

Another roll narrows his place of death to “off Formosa”, about halfway between Java, where he seems to have originally been kept, and Japan, where he was probably bound.

His father would not be the only parent in this situation- the entry appears on British Page 284 of the roll entitled “Unreported Deaths of Allied Personnel”.  He is commemorated on the Singapore Memorial, which commemorates 24,319 British and Commonwealth Servicemen who lost their lives and are not recorded elsewhere.

The next stage is that it will be put on eBay. This is what we do, and although it seems disrespectful to consign such a sad and historical document to an auction, that is, when you think about it, exactly what his family did when they sold it. We could give it to a museum, but museums have  a habit of locking things away where they are never seen again. at least we are able to tell the story and move it on to a collector who will value and cherish it, and possibly give the story a new lease of life.

It’s a moral question I’ve often had to face in many years of collecting and dealing, but the fact to bear in mind is that nothing comes up for sale before the family, or even the recipient, decides to sell it.

 

 

 

Nottingham Man “very happy” after second vaccine

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This started of as the second post of the day, but I fell asleep around 11pm and so this is now the first post of the next day, written just before leaving for work. It may be a bit rushed. It is also the second successive post featuring me being punctured. It’s a wonder I haven’t deflated.

I failed the blood test. My INR went up despite my dose going down. My dosage has been cut down yet again, but the trouble is that once you start losing it, it can take ages to get things back on an even keel. After a couple of years of good results, I have now gone haywire. They say it is due to lockdown, but a friend who had been on Warfarin tells me that it has always been a feature of his dosage – you get up to widely spaced tests, enjoy a year or two of stability then suddenly it all goes wild,

A few years ago I had an accusing phone call from a student nurse who had been given the job of ringing people and discussing their test records with them. Mine was about 75% – a sign that I wasn’t taking the Warfarin regularly, I was told. I pointed out that my record over the last 12 months was actually 100% and that all the bad results came in the first few months as the “highly trained” nursing staff failed to get the dosage right. There was a pause. Then she agreed with me and rang off. I don’t mind being accused of medical delinquency, because I am an appalling patient and very bad at remembering pills. However, I can analyse stats.

Falling asleep at 11pm could have been a side-effect of my vaccination yesterday, but it’s also consistent with my normal routine, as regular readers will know. I also have a slightly sore arm, but it’s only sore when I catch it on a door frame, as I managed to do last night and again this morning. It is also a possible side effect of the vaccination. Or possibly just consistent with being stabbed in the arm with a needle. I didn’t even bleed from the injection site, which always seems to scare them due to my Warfarin.

For the purposes of posterity (I’m thinking of that future PHD student reading my blog as  valuable historic document) I’ve had no side effects from the demon vaccine apart from a little soreness in the arm, and that is consistent with being stabbed in the arm by a needle. As far as I can tell, I have had nothing that can be attributed to the vaccine, but nobody interviews people like me for the paper – they just want stories about pain and death and misery. That’s why I chose the title for today.

Bringing out the worst in me…

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It’s 7.57. On a normal day I would just be lacing my shoes up, ready to take Julia to work. But today isn’t a normal day. I was at hospital for 6.55, securing one of the few remaining parking spaces. Either there are an awful lot of visitors outside opening hours or the staff are using the visitor spaces. I think you know where my money would go if I were a betting man.

I had a twenty minute wait at Phlebotomy because they needed a chat about gloves and the faults with the label printing software. During this time I also noticed that although we have “social distancing” in p[lace for chairs in the waiting room, the chair I selected was not socially distanced from the store cupboard.

When one member of staff used it, we were around 3 feet apart. When four members of staff needed it at the same time, three of them with trollies, I became part of a milling crowd of phlebotomists. I’m going to take a guess here, but my conclusion is that the person who drew up the seating plan had never been to outpatients.

I could go on to offer some suggestions for improvements, and discuss management and leader ship, but I’m eating my breakfast with one hand and typing with the other, thinking is probably a step too far. Anyway, next door’s builders are using power tools and it’s difficult to concentrate.  There’s just something about getting the simple stuff wrong that really brings out the worst in me.

8.26 now. I’ve blogged, I’ve breakfasted and I’ve just checked the work eBay sales. It’s been a quiet week. I can’t see the day being distinguished by urgency and hard work.

Next time I post I will be fully vaccinated. It’s an all action day – blood test in the right arm this morning, vaccination in the left this afternoon. How’s that for advance planning? Two arms, two needles. I’m glad I don’t have a third needle to accommodate, as it would be a tricky choice.

Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

 

A Better Day

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I’m glad to say that things have improved a lot from yesterday and my hands continued to improve during the day.

I think I may have identified the cause of the problem. I have been adjusting the day I take the pills on and have probably stretched things to breaking point. The pharmacist was late with my prescription last time, which moved things on a few days, then I had to move them on a bit to return the pill day to Saturday night. It has to be then in case the stomach trouble, which can be a feature of taking Methotrexate, cuts in. It’s much better taking the pills on Saturday night and being uncomfortable on Sunday.  Taking them during the week and being poorly on a working day is not convenient, and being ill on our joint day off on Wednesday is a definite no-no.

As usual, the cause of the problem is down to me. I am hoping that ordering the pills earlier will cut out most of the problem. However, as yesterday’s post shows, I can still have problems even when I don’t order pills that I don’t need.

Nothing much happened for the rest of the day, I cancelled the online grocery order because we only need a few things to top up, and have plenty of all the staples. That’s what happens with online shopping. I could get them to bring as smaller order but it’s £4.50 to select and deliver and another £4 if I don’t make the £40 minimum order. That’s too much just for the convenience of getting up in the middle of the evening to accept groceries, and substitutions. We will shop for bread and  a few bits and pieces this week but don’t need much.

We had the second part of last night’s Chinese takeaway and i didn’t really enjoy it. I think we may have broken the cycle of ordering takeaways, and our palates may have changed for the better too.  At least some good will have come out of the lockdown.

The picture is the owl sculpture from Harlow Carr gardens – was it really only two years ago? I was able to walk a lot better, and I still had a decent WP editor which allowed plenty of pictures and video clips. If only I’d realised how lucky I was…

 

Bad Hand Day

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Sorry about my absence from posting yesterday. I had a bad hand day and by the time I had finished doing the comments and  a few other bits all I could do was sit in front of the TV and hold a hot water bottle while contemplating removing two of my fingers with a bread knife.

Yes, I was brought down by my two little fingers. Thy have swollen up and started hurting, and in doing so prevented the rest of my hands from working and removed my will to live. It’s strange how something that is under one percent of body mass can stop everything working. I must definitely start that diary I keep talking about and see if I can trace what is making this happen, or even spot some early warning signs.

However, for the moment I am living in ignorance. They aren’t too bad this morning but they still aren’t right either – time will tell whether they improv or deteriorate in the next eight hours.

I’m certainly having a better time than one of the patients at the surgery. I had a text message yesterday telling me that the surgery had not issued my prescription for Pregabalin  and that I had to contact the doctor to discuss my symptoms. So I contacted them. I actually got through without being put in a queue, for once. The conversation went like this.

“Hello, you’ve just sent me a text about a prescription.”

(They did the name and address and date of birth check here…)

“Yes, Mr Wilson, we can’t issue that prescription unless you talk to a doctor first.”

“Well it’s not for me, I haven’t ordered anything and I don’t know what Pregabalin is. This is a message for somebody else.”

“It’s for your Sciatica, but you need to talk to a doctor first about your symptoms.”

“I haven’t got Sciatica, this is for somebody else.”

There was a short pause as they digested this. I don’t suppose they get many patients denying they have symptoms.

“Oh, I’m sorry, we must have sent it in error.”

“No need to apologise, it’s not a problem for me, but I’m a bit worried there’s somebody who needs a prescription who won’t be getting one.”

“Oh, yes, we’d better look into that.”

I hope they did, and I hope they eventually issued the Sciatica pills. I’d hate to be sitting at home expecting a cure, only to find they’d given it to someone else, someone

who is a little worried that they will cock up his Methotrexate in a couple of weeks. I’m steadily losing confidence in the NHS…

Memories of Fotheringhay

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I sat down at 11.15 to write the daily blog. I then started answering comments, reading a couple of blogs, looking something up on Wikipedia, and before I knew where I was it was another day and my target of daily blogging was, again, in tatters.

However, I did read about Sang Culture on Billy Mann’s Blog and a guest post about dustmen on Derrick Knight’s Blog. Both were worthwhile exercises. There is just so much to do and so much to read. Derrick mentioned Sandy Denny in one of his comments and I looked her up on Wiki. I knew she’d sung with Fairport Convention and was well thought of, but that’s as far as it went. My knowledge of many subjects, including music is patchy and I need to top it up. It sems she sang a song called Fothringay and performed in a group called Fotheringay. The song is about Mary Queen of Scots and her captivity in Fotheringhay Castle. Note the spelling. I did write about Fotheringhay a year or two back. Twice. I thought I’d have a listen to the song as I’m in the process of writing about Fotheringhay. It’s probably about time I finished it and sent it to an editor. However, having listened to Sandy Denny’s version I have to say mine still needs some work.

That, I’m afraid, reminds me that I have work to do. Some would call it writing, or enjoyment, but I call it work. This may mean that I don’t have a proper appreciation of proper work, but it may equally mean that those who consider it sitting down typing don’t appreciate the real effort of writing. I mention no names here, but the discussion hinged round the lack of housework I did over the Bank Holiday.

The top photo is the church at Fotheringhay, the last resting place of several members of the House of York, including the Second Duke (killed at Agincourt in 1415). The 3rd Duke of York is buried there too, with his son Edmund – both killed at Wakefield in 1460. The 3rd Duke is the father of two Kings –  Edward IV and Richard III.

Site of Fotheringhay Castle – now just a mound and a pile of stones.